Stuart D. Blacksell

Professor Stuart Blacksell is a Senior Principal Research Scientist at the University of Oxford based at the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) in Thailand, where he has been since 2001. Stuart is a Professor of Tropical Microbiology at the University of Oxford, a Visiting Professor at the Open University UK and Mahidol University, Thailand, and an Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Sydney in Australia. He has been actively involved in studies in Southeast Asia since 1989, where he initially worked as a member of the diagnostics team for the CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory (1983-2001), which first brought him to Thailand (1989-1994) and Laos (1996-2001).

In his current post at MORU, he is the Biorisk and Zoonosis group leader, where he leads DTRA-funded projects on One Health and high-consequence veterinary pathogens, focusing on surveillance, biosafety, and biosecurity knowledge and capacity building in veterinary and human health laboratories in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. He is also the group leader of the DTRA-funded Rickettsia Threat Reduction Network, which raises awareness of the importance of rickettsial pathogens and coordinates collaborative networks with like-minded researchers.

Stuart is a Registered Biosafety Professional with the American Biological Safety Association since 2009 and a WHO Biosafety Advisory Group member. He has been a member of the recently published WHO Laboratory Biosafety Manual 4^th edition (LBM) editorial committee since 2015. He was the lead author of two WHO LBM companion monographs on Laboratory design, maintenance, and Biosafety cabinets and primary containment devices. He is listed on the WHO International Health Regulations (IHR) Roster of Experts and was an original WHO COVID-19 IHR expert committee member. In 2021, he was appointed to the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), and in 2022, he was appointed deputy chair of the WHO Technical Advisory Group -Biosafety (TAG-B). He is an advisor to FAO One Health/Biosafety programs on biosafety and biosecurity throughout Southeast Asia and SAARC countries. He was the lead author of the FAO publication Biosafety Primer. Recently, he has been working with WOAH (OIE) and Chatham House on the Biosafety Research Roadmap to determine gaps in biosafety evidence and knowledge. 

As MORU Health & Safety team leader and chair of the MORU network Health and Safety Committee (2003-present), Stuart and his team are responsible for implementing and enforcing University of Oxford health and safety and biosafety regulations across the MORU network and for training new and existing staff, and annual site inspections. He has applied his biosafety and biocontainment knowledge to enhance MORU’s reference diagnostic capabilities and design and manage MORU’s biological containment level 2 and 3 laboratories in Bangkok and elsewhere in the network. He is currently leading a DTRA-funded team to renovate the Regional Reference Laboratory for Foot and Mouth Disease BSL3 laboratory and training facilities in Pak Chong, Thailand.