Tickets are free, registration opens one month before the lecture.
Discussion
Mon
14
Dec 2026
Gresham in the North Public Lecture
The Future of Medicine
Professor Robin May
What might the future hold for medicine? Are robot surgeons, brain implants, and personalised vaccines just around the corner, or will society disintegrate in the face of another pandemic or a wave of untreatable infections? We will explore medical discoveries that might be just around the corner, the ethical challenges they may bring with them, and how best to stack the dice in favour of a healthier future for humanity.
About the speaker:
Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham, and (interim) Chief Scientist at the UK Health Security Agency, Robin May was appointed Gresham Professor of Physic in May 2022. Between July 2020 and September 2025 he served as Chief Scientific Adviser at the Food Standards Agency (FSA).
Professor May’s early training was in Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford, followed by a PhD on mammalian cell biology at University College London and the University of Birmingham. After postdoctoral research on gene silencing at the Hubrecht Laboratory, The Netherlands, he returned to the UK in 2005 to establish a research program on human infectious diseases. He was Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham from 2017-2020.
Professor May continues his work on Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham. A Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Wolfson Royal Society Research Merit Fellow and Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, Professor May specialises in research into human infectious diseases, with a particular focus on how pathogens survive and replicate within host organisms.
About Gresham:
Gresham College has been providing free public lectures since 1597 when Sir Thomas Gresham’s vision of a college to bring the ‘new learning’ to Londoners was realised. Today we carry on Sir Thomas’s vision, bringing some of the world’s most brilliant minds to speak in fields ranging across the arts and sciences. Now in a special partnership with St John’s College, a series of lectures by leading experts is coming to Durham.
