Nick Talbot

Nicholas José Talbot FRS FRSB (born 5 September 1965) is Group Leader and Executive Director at The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich.

Talbot was educated at Midhurst Grammar School. He went on to study at the University of Wales, Swansea for a Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology graduating in 1986. Following his undergraduate degree, he trained at the University of East Anglia (UEA) where he was awarded a PhD in 1990 for genetic and genomic analysis of the leaf mould Cladosporuim fulvum.

After postdoctoral research at Purdue University from 1990 to 1993, Talbot was appointed a Lecturer at the University of Exeter in 1993, and has been Professor of Molecular Genetics since 1999. He was appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Transfer in 2010. In 2018 Talbot joined The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich as Group Leader and Executive Director.

Talbot's research investigates plant pathology and developmental biology, especially the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea, one of the world's most devastating diseases. Talbot is the editor of Molecular and Cellular Biology of Filamentous Fungi and Plant-Pathogen Interactions.

Talbot's research has been funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Talbot was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB) in 2010, a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2013, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014. His nomination reads:

Nicholas Talbot is distinguished for his discoveries contributing to our knowledge of how fungi cause disease in plants. He has elucidated the molecular processes of cell differentiation and autophagic cell death in fungi causing diseases such as rice blast. He has shown how these processes are intimately involved in virulence and pathogenicity and are orchestrated to enable the complex cellular processes that enable a filamentous fungus to invade healthy plants. His work is characterised by a combination of molecular, genetic, genomic and cell biological approaches.

Talbot is married to Catherine Ann Walsh, with two sons and one daughter.