Professor Patricia Nuttall, OBE

Director, CEH

Pat was appointed Director of CEH at the beginning of June 2001, having previously been Director of CEH Oxford. She is a Professor of Virology of the University of Oxford and a Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She was awarded the Ivanovsky Medal for Virology in 1996 by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the OBE in 2000 for services to environmental sciences. In 2006 she was made a LeConte Scholar by the Georgia Southern University, USA, and an Honorary Professor of Nankia University, P.R. China in 2008. Since March 2008,she has also been chair of PEER (Partnership for European Environmental Research organisations www.peer.eu), and in 2009 received the Chevalier in the Order of the Mérite Agricole from the French Ministry of Agriculture and Fishing.

Pat's principle discipline encompasses microbiology, epidemiology, ecology and molecular biology of tick-borne pathogens (viruses, bacteria), and their interactions with tick vectors and vertebrate hosts. Through her research, she is currently a Director of Pharmatic, a NERC spin-out company that aims to develop new drugs from blood-feeding parasites.