Timesh Pillay

I am a Clinical Lecturer in Respiratory Medicine at UCL and Francis Crick Institute. This position gives me the opportunity to study infectious diseases of the lung such as tuberculosis, while finishing specialty clinical training.

Having got the research bug doing placements with Jaime Miranda (Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima) and Ajit Lalvani (Imperial, London) during my early clinical training years, I wanted to gain skills in fundamental laboratory science. The Francis Crick Institute clinical doctoral programme offered this in spades. In 2021, I join two non-clinical labs, Katrin Rittinger's (Crick), and Teresa Thurston's (then Imperial, now Oxford), to study the mechanisms of Salmonella effector protein-mediated manipulation of the infected host cell environment.

My expectations came up against a reality that reproducible relevant scientific discovery is hard. However, coming out of this process my view of science, and the world, has completely changed. I feel able to ask questions relevant to human health with an understanding of the scientific tools available to answer them. This is incredibly exciting.

I am using my lectureship to study tuberculosis (TB) with a view to developing better approaches to its treatment with existing drugs and novel compounds. I am motivated by the need to tackle TB, which is currently the deadliest infectious disease epidemic globally.