Professor David Stuart

Chancellor:

Professor David Stuart is a highly productive and internationally distinguished structural biologist, whose excellence was recognised early in his career: in the 1990s he was listed by the journal Science, no less, as one of the top fifty most promising young scientists in the world - across all disciplines.

After completing a first degree in Biophysics at King's College, London, Dave Stuart learnt the trade of protein crystallography during PhD and postdoctoral study in the Biochemistry department at Bristol.  He then worked in Professor Louise Johnson's group within David Phillips' Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics before developing a profile as an independent scientist.  Since 1995 he has been MRC Professor of Structural Biology at Oxford, and he is now Head of the Division of Structural Biology in the Department of Clinical Medicine there.

Dave has a truly impressive research record and has been responsible for many important developments in the field of structural virology - in particular determination of the structures of the causative agents of potentially devastating diseases of livestock:  foot-and-mouth and bluetongue.  These are, in fact, just two examples from an impressive list of 'firsts'.  The determination of the structure of the bluetongue virus, in particular, was a massive tour de force:  this was the largest structure to be resolved at near atomic resolution.  

In addition to his contributions to the study of proteins and viruses, Dave has had a much wider influence, both nationally and internationally, on the general direction of structure determination using synchrotron radiation.  This is exemplified by his appointments as Honorary Director of the UK Beamline at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble;  and, more recently, as Life Science Director of the UK synchrotron, the Diamond Light Source (which is one of the most important 'big science' facilities in this country).  He was also instrumental in setting up the Oxford Protein Production Facility, the first high-throughput protein production and crystallisation laboratory in the UK.  In conjunction with this endeavour, he is co-ordinator of a major European programme in Structural Proteomics.

Dave has accrued many prizes and honours during his career including Fellowship of the Royal Society (at the early age of forty-three), Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Aminoff Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.

Professor Stuart is already well-known to many of us at Leeds, both because of his eminence in fields we are interested in and through research collaborations with individual colleagues.  Today, we are delighted to welcome him to the ranks of illustrious alumni.

Chancellor, I am honoured to present to you for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, David Ian Stuart.