Rate My Professor Charlotte Odendall

Dr Charlotte Odendall is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Infectious Diseases in the School of Immunology and Microbial Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, at King’s College London. Her laboratory is affiliated with the Francis Crick Institute through a university attachment. She obtained her PhD in Cellular Microbiology from Imperial College London, focusing on Salmonella pathogenesis in David Holden’s laboratory. She conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital in Jon Kagan’s group, studying innate immune sensing of intracellular pathogens and regulation of type I and III interferons.

Odendall launched her independent research group at King’s College London as a Sir Henry Dale Fellow funded by the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society, and she is now a Senior Lecturer. Her team investigates innate immunity and bacterial pathogenesis, with emphasis on mucosal inflammation and host-pathogen interactions. They study how epithelial and immune cells detect bacterial infections, regulate inflammation, and are targeted by microbial effectors from enteric pathogens such as Salmonella and Shigella. Research encompasses type I and III interferon signalling in gut infection outcomes, bacterial immune evasion, and calcium-regulated pathways including CaMKII. Her work is funded by the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council. Awards include the Regeneron New Investigator Award from the International Cytokine & Interferon Society, EMBO Young Investigator Programme membership (2024–2027), and a Wellcome Career Development Award for an eight-year programme exploring CaMKII’s role in calibrating immune responses to balance pathogen clearance and tissue damage.

Prominent publications are ‘Diverse intracellular pathogens activate type III interferon expression’ (Nature Immunology, 2014), ‘A family of conserved bacterial virulence factors dampens interferon responses required for mucosal immunity’ (Cell, 2022), ‘Functions of IFNλs in Anti-Bacterial Immunity at Mucosal Barriers’ (Frontiers in Immunology, 2022), ‘Ca²⁺-calmodulin signalling at the host-pathogen interface’ (Current Opinion in Microbiology, 2023), and ‘Animal models of shigellosis: a historical overview’ (Current Opinion in Immunology, 2023). Her scholarship has over 1,900 citations.