Rate My Professor Michelle West

Professor Michelle West serves as Head of the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences and Professor of Tumour Virology at Queen Mary University of London, having joined in January 2026. Prior to this, she was Head of the School of Life Sciences and Professor of Tumour Virology at the University of Sussex, where she also held positions as Deputy Head of School for Research and Enterprise and Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedicine. She established her independent research group at the University of Sussex in 2001, funded by a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship. Her academic training includes a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Warwick, where she first developed interests in cancer biology and gene regulation, followed by a PhD in the Department of Cancer Studies at the University of Birmingham. There, under Martin Rowe, she studied the regulation of transcription by the nuclear antigens (EBNAs) produced by Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Her postdoctoral research encompassed translational control of MYC expression with Anne Willis at the University of Leicester and the regulation of Human Immunodeficiency Virus 1 (HIV-1) transcription at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.