Rate My Professor David MacIntyre

Professor David MacIntyre, PhD, FRSB, is Professor of Reproductive Systems Medicine and Director of the University of Adelaide’s Robinson Research Institute within the College of Health. He earned his BSc in Biotechnology in 2001, BSc Honours First Class in 2002, and PhD in Reproductive Medicine in 2007, all from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Following his PhD, he conducted postdoctoral training in metabolic profiling at the Centro de Investigación Príncipe Felipe in Valencia, Spain, where he held a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship from 2007 to 2010. In late 2010, he joined Imperial College London, advancing through positions including Post-doctoral Fellow (2010-2013), MRC Career Development Fellow and Lecturer (2014-2017), Senior Lecturer (2017-2019), Reader (2019-2022), and Professor of Reproductive Systems Medicine (2022-2024). He served as Head of the Section of Pregnancy, Parturition and Prematurity from 2019 to 2024 and Co-Director of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Centre from 2018. In 2024, he relocated to the University of Adelaide in his current leadership roles while retaining a Visiting Professorship at Imperial College London.

Professor MacIntyre’s research investigates the dynamic interplay between microbiota and the maternal host during pregnancy, utilizing multi-omics approaches including metagenomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics to understand influences on maternal and neonatal health outcomes. His team has demonstrated that high-diversity vaginal microbiomes enriched in pathogens increase miscarriage risk, that vaginal microbiomes predict preterm birth and neonatal sepsis, and that cervicovaginal metabolomic signatures forecast microbiome composition and host immune responses. Current projects explore microbe-host co-evolution in the reproductive tract and biomarkers in biofluids like menstrual blood. He has secured over £16 million in funding as principal investigator from the UK Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health and Care Research, March of Dimes, Gates Foundation, and European Research Council, supporting collaborations across Australia, UK, USA, Europe, China, Zambia, and Ghana. Awards include the 2024 J. Christian Herr Award from the American Society for Reproductive Immunology, 2016 President’s Award for Outstanding Early Career Researcher from Imperial College London, 2013 UK Medical Research Council Career Development Award, and election as Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2025. Key publications include “The vaginal microbiome during pregnancy and the postpartum period in a European population” (Scientific Reports, 2015; 694 citations), “Microbiome preterm birth DREAM challenge” (Cell Reports Medicine, 2025), and “The microbiome: a determinant of reproductive health and fitness?” (Fertility and Sterility, 2026). His scholarly impact features an h-index of 48 and over 11,300 citations.