Professor Mark Nicol is a medical microbiologist in the Division of Infection and Immunity in the School of Biomedical Sciences. He also holds an honorary appointment at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He has a passion for using modern molecular tools to understand complex microbial communities, investigating how imbalances in these communities cause illness and to develop and test better diagnostics for infections, particularly for diseases relating to poverty. 

Specific focus areas of Dr Nicol’s research are the pathogenesis and diagnosis of respiratory infection in children, development, evaluation and implementation of novel diagnostic tests for tuberculosis, the cascade of care for patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis and the role of the microbiome in early childhood development and illness. Professor Nicol has done seminal work on diagnostics for tuberculosis in children and adults, which has provided an evidence base for the new molecular tuberculosis tests used worldwide, and has contributed to many WHO policy recommendations and guidelines. 

Dr Nicol has successfully competed for grants from major international funders, including recent funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust. He is a member of the advisory board for several large biotech companies and grant consortia, and a member of the International Interview Panel for the Wellcome Trust. 

A major emphasis is placed on the development of the next generation of researchers, and many of Dr Nicol's students have received international fellowships as well as awards at scientific meetings.