Dr Virginia A Pedicord

Dr Pedicord received her PhD in Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis from Cornell University, studying T cell biology and cancer immunotherapy under the supervision of Dr James P Allison at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She then completed postdoctoral training in mucosal immunology and enteric infection at the Rockefeller University before starting her own research group at the University of Cambridge.

In Cambridge, she has pioneered new functional approaches to microbiome research and generated key bioinformatics and biological tools to enable mechanistic studies of how the gut microbiome modulates health and disease. Her research group aims to decipher what the genomically encoded functions and metabolic outputs of the microbiome are and how these affect host physiology. Leveraging key clinical collaborations alongside bioinformatics, multi-omics and experimental models, her research spans numerous disease and health states, including irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, multiple cancer types, Alzheimer’s disease, enteric infection and autism spectrum disorders.