Willem van Schaik is Professor of Microbiology and Infection in the Institute of Microbiology and Infection of the University of Birmingham. Professor Van Schaik obtained his PhD degree in microbiology from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He then did post-doctoral studies on an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship at the Pasteur Institute (Paris, France). He then moved
Biography
Willem van Schaik is Professor of Microbiology and Infection in the Institute of Microbiology and Infection of the University of Birmingham. Professor Van Schaik obtained his PhD degree in microbiology from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He then did post-doctoral studies on an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship at the Pasteur Institute (Paris, France). He then moved to the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, where he set up his own research group on antibiotic resistance in 2010. Prof Van Schaik moved to the University of Birmingham in April 2017. He has received major grants from The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission, the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR) and The Royal Society. He was awarded a Royal Society Research Merit Award in 2017.
The research group of Professor van Schaik combines experimental tools in molecular biology and biochemistry with the opportunities offered by the development of novel, high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies and bioinformatics to elucidate the mechanisms by which harmless commensals transition into multi-drug resistant opportunistic pathogens. In addition, he studies the role of complex microbial ecosystems, in particular the human gut microbiome, as reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes (‘the resistome’).