Wendy Gibson

Wendy Gibson is Professor of Protozoology at University of Bristol, specialising in trypanosomes and molecular parasitology.

Career Wendy C. Gibson studied B. Sc. Zoology at University College London, UK graduating in 1975 followed by a doctorate at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine that was awarded in 1979. She continued to work there with Wallace Peters for a short time after her doctorate. She was awarded DSc by the University of London in 1997. Further development allowed details of genetic recombination during sexual reproduction of T. brucei within its tsetse fly host to be identified.

Gibson has also studied of the interactions of trypanosomes within domestic animals that result in disease. One of these was T. congolense where her methods using fluorescent protein markers allowed the details of its sexual reproduction to be identified. Other collaborations include with veterinary scientists about the presence of trypanosomes in pet dogs in Nigeria.

She was a member of the consortium that provided the first genome sequence of Trypanosoma brucei gambiense and T. grayi, a parasite of crocodiles.

She has participated in public discussions about parasites, including in the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our time in 2017.

Gibson was Vice President and then President of British Society for Protist Biology from 2006 until 2011.