Stewart Cole was born in 1955 and grew up in Wales, where he was educated at Milford Haven Grammar School and then at Ardwyn Grammar School, Aberystwyth. Following a life-threatening bout of paratyphoid he developed an interest in bacteria, viruses and infectious diseases, which led to his reading microbiology at the University of Wales, in Cardiff followed by research for his PhD at the University of Sheffield, England. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Umeå and a research assistant at the Max-Planck-Institut for Biology, Tübingen.
Career and research
Stewart Cole has been active in infectious disease research and global health for many years. Between 2007 and 2017, he was a full professor and director of the Global Health Institute at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. His laboratory at EPFL closed in December 2018. He was previously professor, senior vice president and scientific director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, which he later rejoined as president and CEO. His research accomplishments in microbiology have been widely acclaimed and are of direct relevance to global health and disease-control in both the developing world and the industrialized nations. Over four decades his team has investigated a range of topics including: bacterial electron transport systems; the genomics and diagnostics of retroviruses and oncogenic papillomaviruses ; antibiotic resistance mechanisms; and the molecular microbiology of toxigenic clostridia. Cole is best-known for his pioneering work on the genomics, evolution and virulence of pathogenic mycobacteria, especially those causing the human diseases tuberculosis and leprosy. Cole has supervised some 30 students for MS and PhD degrees, and trained 40 postdoctoral fellows and clinicians. With them, he has published over 350 scientific papers and review articles. He is also an inventor on many patents, several of which were licensed to industrial partners giving rise to diagnostic and therapeutic products that have found direct application in human medicine and helped save lives. Cole was scientific coordinator for the New Medicines For Tuberculosis project, running from 2006 to 2009 and the ensuing More Medicines For Tuberculosis project running from 2011 to 2016 in the context of the FP7 European Union's Research and Innovation funding programme. This work led to the discovery of the TB drug candidate macozinone and the creation by EPFL of the not-for-profit spin-off iM4TB. MCZ is currently in phase 2 clinical trials.
Director of the Pasteur Institute
Stewart Cole was appointed as the 16th director general of the Pasteur Institute on 13 October 2017, 130 years after its foundation, thus becoming the first non-French appointee. He took office on 2 January 2018, when he began to prepare the institute’s Strategic Plan for 2019-2023. The overarching ambition of the Strategic Plan is to give new impetus to basic research at the institute and to increase its impact on human health. Priority areas of the Strategic Plan include emerging infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, brain connectivity and neurodegenerative diseases. From the Strategic Plan it is clear that the four missions originally defined by Louis Pasteur for his institute - research, public health, training/education and translating research into applications of value to humanity - are as relevant today as they were in 1887 when the Pasteur Institute was founded.
