Prof Howard Clark [University of Southampton and University College London]

Host: Assoc. Prof William Horsnell [Div. of Immunology/IDM]

Professor Clark read medicine at Cambridge and completed clinical training at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge. After completing general paediatric training at the Royal Hospital for Children in Bristol and Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in Hackney, London, he took up a Fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at the Cardiovascular Research Institute and Department of Paediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). In addition to training in neonatology he carried out basic research on lung surfactant biochemistry and metabolism in the laboratories of Dr John Clements and Professor Samuel Hawgood for which he was awarded the MD by Cambridge University. Returned to Britain as Eden Fellow in Paediatrics of the Royal College of Physicians of London he carried out basic research on lung surfactant proteins A and D at the MRC Immunochemistry Unit in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford for which he was awarded the DPhil. He was awarded a Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research to continue these studies and appointed as an MRC Senior Scientist in 2002, completing clinical training in neonatology at the John Radcliffe Hospital. Whilst in Oxford Professor Clark demonstrated that a recombinant fragment of surfactant protein D was an effective anti inflammatory agent in models of allergic and infectious lung disease and demonstrated a key function of surfactant protein D in the clearance of apoptotic cells in the lung showing that this mechanism was protective against the development of pulmonary emphysema. Prof Clark was awarded the 2002 Medical Futures Glaxo SmithKline Award for the best Innovation to Improve Child Health and the Young Investigator Medal of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. He was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship in Medicine at Mansfield College, Oxford in 2004 Was head of the Department of Child Health at Southampton from 2007-2019. He will join UCL in January 2020.