Rate My Professor Edze Westra

Edze Westra is Professor of Microbiology in the Biosciences department at the University of Exeter, affiliated with the Environment and Sustainability Institute on the Penryn Campus. He holds BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. After completing his PhD, Westra joined the University of Exeter as a Marie Curie Fellow in the laboratory of Professor Angus Buckling. He advanced to Professor in October 2019 and serves as a NERC Independent Research Fellow. Westra leads the Westra Lab, which examines bacteria-phage and phage-phage interactions using model systems like Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The lab's research encompasses ecological drivers of bacterial defence evolution, multi-layered immune system dynamics, defence impacts on microbial communities, and phage quorum sensing for lysis-lysogeny decisions.

Westra directs a £4.5 million BBSRC sLoLa grant consortium across seven UK institutions investigating bacterial multi-layered immune systems, alongside a BBSRC-NSF grant on defence-community interactions. His achievements include the 2021 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists UK Finalist, 2020 Philip Leverhulme Prize, 2020 Microbiology Society Fleming Prize, 2016 Heineken Young Investigator Award from the Dutch Royal Society for Science, 2014 Johanna Westerdijk Award from the Netherlands Society for Microbiology, and 2013 H.G.K. Westenbrink Prize from the Netherlands Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Key publications feature 'Arbitrium phages can manipulate each other’s lysis/lysogeny decisions' (Cell, 2026), 'Realizing phage therapy in the UK' (Nature Microbiology, 2026), 'Temperate phage evolve to integrate host stress and quorum signals in lysis–lysogeny decisions' (PLOS Biology, 2026), 'Bacterial immune systems as causes and consequences of microbiome structure' (PLOS Biology, 2025), and 'Phage defence-system abundances vary across environments and increase with viral density' (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2025). With over 17,000 Google Scholar citations, his pioneering studies on CRISPR-Cas mechanisms and evolutionary factors have influenced phage therapy, gene editing, and antimicrobial resistance research.