SEMINAR: Asthma: Genes versus the microbiome at the airway barrier

William Cookson is Professor of Genomic Medicine at Imperial College London and Head of Respiratory Sciences for the College. He is also Head of the Asmarley Centre for Genomic Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute. He won a Joint Wellcome Senior Investigator Award with Professor Miriam Moffatt in 2011, and was elected to the College of NIHR Senior Investigators in 2013

After completing his studies at UWA, Professor Cookson initially trained as a respiratory physician, before receiving a D.Phil. in human genetics at Oxford in 1994. He was a Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford between 1998 and 2004. Over the past twenty-five years he and Miriam Moffatt have developed a successful research group devoted to understanding the genetic causes of asthma (Zhang Y. et al., Nature Genetics 2003; Allen M. et al., Nature Genetics 2003; Moffatt M. et al., Nature 2007;Moffatt M. et al., New England Journal of Medicine 2010).

Bill has strong collaborations with research groups in Western Australia, in particular with Prof A.W. Musk and Prof. Alan James around the Busselton population surveys, and with Prof. Peter le Souef around childhood asthma. These collaborations largely depend on the transfer of samples for genomic analysis to his Centre in London, whereas a far better model would be to transfer knowledge and expertise to the University of Western Australia.

The primary aim of Professor Cookson's visit to Perth in November through the Raine visiting Professorship is to increase collaborative activities and to enhance core facilities for Genomic Medicine at UWA, with an initial focus on lung disease.