Rate My Professor Simon Newstead

Professor Simon Newstead is the David Phillips Chair of Molecular Biophysics in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford. He holds a Professorial Fellowship at Corpus Christi College and is a member of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery. Newstead received his MBiochem (Hons.) degree from the University of Bath in 2001 and his PhD in protein crystallography from the University of St Andrews in 2004. He subsequently worked in the membrane protein laboratory of Professor So Iwata at Imperial College London on structural studies of secondary active transporters. In 2009, he received an MRC Career Development Award to establish his research group in Oxford focused on cellular nutrient uptake and drug transport. He was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry in 2013 and promoted to Professor in 2015. In 2022, he was appointed to the David Phillips Chair and elected Professorial Fellow at Corpus Christi College. Newstead leads the Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics research theme in the Department of Biochemistry. His research focuses on the structural and functional analysis of membrane proteins involved in nutrient uptake and drug transport, with particular emphasis on families of secondary active SLC transporters including the SLC15 peptide transporters PepT1 and PepT2, the SLC7, 36 and 38 families of amino acid transporters, and the SLC35 family of nucleotide sugar transporters. The group employs protein crystallisation, single particle cryo-EM, biochemical analysis of reconstituted proteins, and functional assays. Newstead was elected a member of the Royal Society of Biology in 2019. He has received Wellcome Investigator Awards in 2014 and 2020, a Wellcome Collaborative Award in 2020, the BCA Early Research Award in 2015, and the MRC Career Development Award in 2009. He currently leads the Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics research theme.