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[MEW]  Michael Ward (Webmaster).

The webmaster in nautical mode, S Coast England.

Bow to a rock, anchor at the stern, a peaceful
natural mooring, Fifang Island, E Sweden.

Anchor watch at 2 am, midnight sun, with frozen sea and 'growlers'. Spitzbergen, about 600 miles from the North Pole and home to a quarter of the world's polar bears. A 'growler' is a form of sea ice!

Michael Ward was formerly Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of Southampton School of Medicine, in the United Kingdom. He graduated in Microbiology from University College, London University in 1967 and completed a PhD on gonococci in 1970 at the Wright-Fleming Institute of St Mary's Hospital, London (where penicillin was discovered).

His PhD work on the pathogenesis of gonococcal infection included 2 letters in Nature. He  published the first electron micrographs of the in vivo adhesion of gonococci to human epithelia and described the process by which gonococci invade perfused human fallopian tube in vitro. One of the few people in the world to have been vaccinated with self-prepared gonococcal pilli, a gonococcal adhesion factor, he lamentably lacked the courage to 'bed test' this ' vaccine' when the antigenic versatility of gonococci became clear!  He became Lecturer in Medical Microbiology in Southampton University in 1972.

In 1979, increasingly interested in mechanisms of bacterial uptake by epithelial cells, he switched from gonococcal to chlamydial research. His was one of three groups which in 1981 independently co-discovered the chlamydial major outer membrane protein (MOMP), still today the main vaccine candidate. This was followed by the initial characterisation of genes encoding various chlamydial surface or envelope antigens and by the high resolution mapping of neutralizing epitopes on MOMP using combinatorial peptide chemistry.  A fruitful collaboration with MRC in The Gambia followed on the molecular epidemiology of trachoma. His interest in gonococcal and chlamydial infections resulted in him serving for 6 years on the steering group of the WHO HRP task force on infertility.  More recently, he published a series of papers challenging accepted thinking on the role of C. pneumoniae in coronary artery disease, a sceptical view which has largely been vindicated. He is the author of a large number of papers on both basic and applied aspects of chlamydial research.

An increasing role in IT and e-learning resulted in him becoming, in addition to his role as a microbiologist, the Director of the Information and Computing Division of the University of Southampton School of Medicine. He took early retirement in Sept 2004, becoming an Emeritus Professor, providing the free time to indulge his interests. As webmaster of this site and www.iusti.org he has an excellent incentive to continue to keep up with the research literature.

A lover of classical music and wild life, a keen sailor, he is fortunate to live on the South Coast of England, a UNESCO World Heritage coast. However his yacht is based in the Baltic and he spends most of the summer sailing in the wilder parts of Northern Europe.

This summer house sails and has excellent views!