Prof Michael Jennings works in the fields of bacterial genetics, bacterial pathogenesis, vaccine development and glycobiology. His undergraduate and postgraduate degrees (PhD 1990) are from Griffith University, Australia. His post-doctoral training was in the laboratory of Prof Richard Moxon at the University of Oxford (1992-1996), supported by a Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research. In 1997 he took up a faculty position at the University of Queensland. In 2009 he returned to Griffith University to take up the position of Deputy Director and Principal Research Leader at the Institute for Glycomics. He has made major contributions to understanding virulence factor function and regulation in a range of bacterial pathogens, including the discovery of epigenetic regulation systems call phasevarions. His current work focuses on the role of glyco-interactions in infectious disease.