Catch up on COG-UK's latest installment in the Women in COG series, featuring Sir Jeremy Farrar in conversation with Professor Sharon Peacock.
Jeremy Farrar is Director of the Wellcome Trust – the world’s second largest independent charitable foundation that exists to improve human health through research. Jeremy is a clinician scientist who before joining Wellcome in 2013 was, for eighteen years, Director of the Clinical Research Unit at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Viet Nam, where his research interests were in global health with a focus on emerging infectious diseases. He was named 12th in the Fortune list of 50 World’s Greatest Leaders in 2015 and was awarded the Memorial Medal and Ho Chi Minh City Medal from the Government of Viet Nam. In 2018 he was recognised as the President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian of the Year. Jeremy was knighted in the Queen’s 2019 New Year Honours for services to global health and awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon by the Government of Japan in recognition of contribution to global health. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences UK, European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO), the National Academies USA and a Fellow of The Royal Society.
Sharon Peacock is a clinician scientist who has worked in academic clinical microbiology across the United Kingdom and in Southeast Asia for the last 25 years, including 7 years living and working in Thailand and Cambodia. She is currently Professor of Public Health and Microbiology in the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge; Executive Director of the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium; and a Non-Executive Director on the board of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Sharon has built her scientific expertise around pathogen genomics, antimicrobial resistance, and a range of tropical diseases. She has raised around £60 million pounds in science funding, published more than 500 peer-reviewed papers, and has trained a generation of scientists in the UK and elsewhere. She has sought to influence both practice and policy relating to the use of pathogen genomics in diagnostic and public health over the last decade. Sharon was instrumental in the development of COG-UK, which was formed in April 2020 to provide SARS-CoV-2 genomes to UK public health agencies, and which has since generated over a million SARS-CoV-2 genomes. Sharon is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and an elected Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). In 2015, She received a CBE for services to medical microbiology, and in 2018 she won the Unilever Colworth Prize for her outstanding contribution to translational microbiology.
About Women in COG
The COG-UK consortium has over 500 members with a range of scientific and business expertise in genomics, bioinformatics, operations clinical science and public health. Women in COG is a supportive network to share experience and knowledge and to promote science careers in women and girls.
This is the next event in our series of monthly lunchtime Women in COG events and everyone (regardless of gender) is welcome to attend. The events will feature a conversation with a guest or consortium member followed by an informal Q&A.
