Dr Connor Bamford
I am the PI of the group and the supervisor for every member of the team. I am a molecular biologist by training, focused on the interactions between viral pathogens and the machinery of the host cell, and fascinated by the diversity of living systems and how they evolve. My route here ran from a molecular biology degree at Queen's, through a PhD on mumps virus, to postdoctoral work on innate immunity to hepatitis C in Glasgow, and back to Belfast for the COVID-19 response. I now lead an interdisciplinary team working on re-emerging respiratory-borne viruses and arboviruses, across host-pathogen immunity, viral evolution and monitoring, and the environmental drivers of infection.
Role: Lecturer in Virology, School of Biological Sciences and the Institute for Global Food Security, QUB.
The path here
I graduated from Queen's with a degree in molecular biology in 2010 and stayed on for a PhD in molecular virology, completed in 2014. That work developed a novel reverse genetics system for the paramyxovirus mumps virus, under the mentorship of Professors Paul Duprex and Bert Rima.
Wanting to understand the host side of the equation as well as the virus, I moved to the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research for postdoctoral training with Professor John McLauchlan, working on innate immunity to hepatitis C virus infection. Those six years in Glasgow also gave me my grounding in BSL3 containment work.
In 2019 an institutional Wellcome Trust ISSF Fellowship brought me back to Queen's, this time to the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine, to work on how bacteria interact with viruses and immunity. Then the pandemic arrived, and the work turned to SARS-CoV-2: drug development in the high-containment laboratory, and viral surveillance through the pandemic.
That period made the One Health drivers of infectious disease impossible to ignore. In 2023 I started my own group in the School of Biological Sciences and the Institute for Global Food Security, as a lecturer in virology.
Teaching, service and engagement
At Queen's I am fortunate to teach virology and immunology across many degree pathways and year groups. I am also the School's Biosafety Officer, and I sit on both the equality, diversity and inclusion committee and the widening participation committee.
Wider engagement with science matters to me. I am an elected member of the UK Microbiology Society's Virus Division, and an inaugural elected member of Young Academy Ireland.
Outside the lab: Time with my family, especially my wife, our two young children, and the cat.