Dr. Steve Russell

Biography

Steve Russell is the Head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, where he has been a faculty member since 1990. He began his career as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Michael Ashburner’s group, shortly after completing his PhD in Genetics at the University of Glasgow. In 2000, he established the core functional genomics infrastructure for the UK Drosophila community and has played a key role in developing genetic tools widely used in research, including the DrosDel collection. Professor Russell has been involved in numerous collaborative projects, such as the Target Malaria programme aimed at controlling the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae. His research primarily focuses on transcriptional regulation and chromatin architecture in Drosophila, examining the roles of Sox domain transcription factors in development. He has published extensively on the subject, contributing to key findings in developmental biology and gene regulation. In addition to his research, he has a long-standing interest in improving institutional research assessments and currently chairs a committee at the University tasked with implementing the DORA initiative, aimed at reforming research evaluation practices. Professor Russell is committed to enhancing community resources for Drosophila research, having contributed to projects like DrosDel and FlyChip, and is actively involved in generating new proteomics resources for the Drosophila research community.

Research Interests

Experience