Professor Deborah Williamson is a Clinical and Public Health Microbiologist and Professor / Director of Microbiology at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Doherty Institute. She is also a laboratory head in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne and a Dame Kate Campbell Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She is an NHMRC Investigator Grant recipient, received a L’Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science Fellowship in 2017 and was awarded the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases Frank Fenner Award in 2020.