Sharon was first appointed to the Board of Directors in October 2015. She was subsequently re-appointed for a second term of three years commencing on 1 October 2018, and for a third three-year term which commenced on 1 October 2021.
Sharon Peacock is Professor of Public Health and Microbiology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of St John’s College Cambridge, and a Trustee of the Sir Jules Thorn Charitable Trust.
Sharon has built her scientific expertise around pathogen genomics, antimicrobial resistance, and a range of tropical diseases. She was the founding director of COG-UK (the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium), formed in April 2020 to provide SARS-CoV-2 genomes to UK public health agencies, the NHS and researchers. Prior to this, she dedicated more than a decade to the translation of pathogen sequencing into clinical and public health microbiology, as well as using sequencing to examine the transmission of antibiotic-resistant bacteria between humans, livestock, and the environment. Sharon has served and continues to serve the wider science ecosystem through appointments to numerous scientific funding Boards.
Sharon was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London (2002), and a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (2005). She was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2013); Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (2014), Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO); and elected to the Academia Europaea (2022). She was awarded a DSc (Honoris causa), Royal Veterinary College, London (2022), and a DSc (University of Southampton) in 2023. She was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2023.
In 2015, Sharon was appointed by Her Majesty The Queen to a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Medical Microbiology. She was awarded the Microbiology Society Unilever Colworth Prize for outstanding contribution to translational microbiology (2018); the Microbiology Society Marjorie Stephenson Prize for exceptional contributions to the discipline of microbiology (2023); and received the Medical Research Council Millennium Medal (2021).