Professor Sir Michael Ferguson CBE FRS FRSE FMedSci

Mike Ferguson was Regius Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee from 2013 to 2026. On 5 November 2021, he was elected as an academic member of Staff Council to serve a four-year term on Court, running to 31 July 2025.

Mike Ferguson obtained a PhD in Biochemistry (1982) at London University. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rockefeller University, New York, with George Cross FRS and at Oxford University with Raymond Dwek FRS. He took up a lectureship at The University of Dundee in 1988, was promoted to a personal chair in Molecular Parasitology in 1994 and appointed the first Regius Professor of Life Sciences in 2013.

He has published over 250 peer reviewed research papers and is known for solving the first structures of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) membrane anchors, which play important roles throughout eukaryotic biology.

His research took a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the biochemistry of protozoan parasites that cause tropical diseases, particularly the trypanosomatids that cause human African Sleeping Sickness, Chagas' disease and leishmaniasis. He believes in the fundamental importance of working across the Biology / Chemistry interface and is particularly interested in Translational Research. Together with his colleagues, he was instrumental in establishing the Drug Discovery Unit at the University of Dundee in 2006, which has placed five new chemical entities into clinical trials. He was also founder and co-Director of “Fingerprints”, a large and successful Proteomics Facility at Dundee.
 


Mike was Dean of Research for Life Sciences from 2007-2014 and continues to play a role in Research Strategy. 

He helped fundraise for the Sir James Black Centre, which opened in 2006, and led and fundraised for the construction of the Discovery Centre (for Translational and Interdisciplinary Research) which opened in 2014.

He is co-lead on the Growing the Tay Cities BioMedical Cluster component of the Tay Cities Deal. He helped design, and fundraise for, the Life Sciences Innovation Hub for spinout, startup and spin in companies which opened in 2025. 

Mike was a member (2012-2017) and Deputy Chair (2018-2021) of the Wellcome Trust Board of Governors, and he served on the inaugural board of Wellcome Leap from 2019 to 2022. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) (2012-2024). He is currently a member of the board of UK Biobank (2022-present) and chairs its Access Committee. He is also a member of the board of the Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC) (2025-present) and will chair that board from January 2027. He also chairs the board of Roland Wolf’s startup company PhaSER Bio.

Mike is a Fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh, of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a member of EMBO. He was awarded a CBE in 2008 and knighted in 2019 for services to science. 

Declared Interests

• Antimicrobial resistance
• Infectious diseases
• Medicines