Christopher McDevitt Lorne Infection and Immunity 2018

Christopher McDevitt

Professor Christopher McDevitt obtained his B.Sc. (Hons) and PhD in microbiology at the University of Queensland. He then undertook two postdoctoral roles studying membrane transport proteins at the University of Oxford, UK. In 2008, he relocated from Oxford to the University of Adelaide, Australia, to take up a position in the Research Centre for Infectious Disease (RCID). From 2012 he was an independent research fellow in the RCID leading his own research group and, in 2014 he was appointed as the inaugural Deputy Director of the RCID. In 2016 he established a second university centre, the Australian Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance Ecology (ACARE) with Prof. Darren Trott and also served as the inaugural Deputy Director. In 2017, he was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship and, in 2018 he was recruited to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Melbourne. His research centres on defining the role of inorganic chemical elements at the host-pathogen interface. The central theme of his work is to understand how bacterial pathogens recognize specific, essential first-row transition metal ions, in chemically complex environments and achieve specific import of these ions across biological membranes. The outcomes of these fundamental studies are being leveraged into the development of novel antimicrobial therapeutics to prevent and treat bacterial pneumonia and other infections. His discovery-based approach to research has led to more than 70 peer-reviewed publications and more than $8 million in funding comprising competitive research grants, fellowships and industry funding.