Mike Curtis is Professor of Microbiology in the Centre for Host-Microbiome Interactions.

Following his PhD in Microbiology from the University of London, he was a visiting Fogarty Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, USA (1980-85), where he worked on the characterisation of anaerobic metabolism and electron flow in microbial communities. Upon returning to England, he worked at the Medical Research Council Dental Research Unit (1985-94) on risk factors for periodontal disease and led the MRC Microbial Molecular Pathogenesis Group (1994-2004), where he worked mainly on the biology of the periodontal bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis. During the period 2001-17 he worked at Queen Mary University of London as Head of the Department of Clinical Microbiology (2001-03), Dean for Research of the School of Medicine and Dentistry (2002-04), Director of the Blizard Institute (2003-13), Dean for Dentistry (2013-17) and Deputy Vice-Principal for Health (2012-17). He was appointed Executive Dean of the Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences at King’s College London (2017-2021) and served as Senior Vice President (Academic) for King’s in 2021/22.

He was awarded Honorary Fellowship in Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (FDSRCS, 2008), Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci, 2009), Distinguished Scientist in Basic Periodontal Disease Research of the IADR in 2005 and Distinguished Scientist of the European Federation of Periodontology in 2017. Most recently, he was awarded the 2021 International Association for Dental Research William J Giles Award for the best paper published in the Journal of Dental Research.

Mike’s current research focuses on the role of the oral microbiome in host development, the maintenance of health and oral/systemic disease and virulence determinants of oral bacteria.