Deborah Williamson

What makes Deborah Williamson a Global Shaker?

A revered clinical and public health microbiologist, Deborah Williamson is the co-head of Public Health at the Doherty Institute in Melbourne, Australia, deputy director of the Microbiological Diagnostic Unit Public Health Laboratory at the Doherty Institute, and co-chair of the Communicable Diseases Genomics Network. She is also the director of Microbiology at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and a laboratory head in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne.

“I’m really passionate about doing applied research that will inform effective public health interventions, and will have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of people in Australia and beyond.”

Originally from Scotland, Dr Williamson attended medical school at the University of Glasgow before moving to England to conduct postgraduate training at St Mary’s Hospital and Imperial College. She then moved to New Zealand to complete a doctorate at the University of Auckland.

In 2016, she received the Vice Chancellors’ Award for best doctoral thesis for her PhD on bacterial genomics. The following year, she was awarded the L’Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science Fellowship. She is also a recipient of the NHMRC Investigator Grant.

Prior to her work at the Doherty Institute, Dr Williamson served as a clinical microbiologist at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) in Wellington, New Zealand. This role broadened her horizons as to the ways that scientific research can be utilised in practical ways.

“From a clinical perspective, it can directly inform patient management,” she explained in an interview from January 2016. “From a government agency perspective, science can be used to inform policy and practice, and from an academic perspective it can be much more exploratory and hypothesis-generating.”

At the Doherty Institute, her research group focuses on the application of genomic technologies to public health, with an emphasis on antimicrobial-resistant pathogens.

“I’m really passionate about doing applied research that will inform effective public health interventions, and will have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of people in Australia and beyond.”

Dr Williamson is a member of the Royal College of Physicians, a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists Australasia and a member of the editorial board of Microbial Genomics.

Last updated: February 11, 2020

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