Biography

Hilary Hurd was appointed to a chair in Parasitology in 2002 and was Director of the Centre of Applied Entomology and Parasitology from 1996 to 2007. She obtained a BSc Hons in Zoology from the University of Wales, Swansea in 1968 and, after studying for a Post Graduate Certificate in Education, spent 5 years teaching Biology in the UK and in Uganda. A career gap, taken whilst her 2 children were pre-school age was followed by a return to post-graduate education and she obtained a PhD in Parasitology in 1985 under the supervision of Prof. Chris Arme, Keele University. She was one of the first recipients of a Daphne Jackson Fellowship for Women Returners to Science in 1988 and was appointed to a lectureship at Keele University in 1990.

Her teaching duties currently include a second year module on Symbiotic Relationships, a final year module on Parasitology and contributions to a first year module on Diversity of Organisms and the MSc course in Vector Biology and Molecular Parasitology and the residential Field Course on Coastal Ecology.

She was President of the British Society for Parasitology 2004-2006, and has been a member of the Membership Committee of the American Society of Parasitologists and a past Council member of the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine and Parasitology.

Her research interests are in the field of Parasite-Insect Interactions and mosquito stages of the malaria parasite and currently include: the involvement of apoptosis in malaria / mosquito interactions, the fitness effects of malaria parasites upon both susceptible and refractory mosquitoes and the development of transgenic mosquitoes that are incompetent malaria vectors.

Recent key publications

Arambage, S.C., Grant, K.M., Pardo, I., Ranford-Cartwright, L. and Hurd, H. (2009). Malaria ookinetes exhibit multiple markers for apoptosis-like programmed cell death in vitro. Parasites and Vectors 2:32.

Voordouw, M.J. Anholt B. and Hurd, H (2009). Rodent Malaria-Resistant Strains of the Mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, have slower population growth than susceptible strains. BMC Evolutionary Biology 9:76

Hurd, H. (2009). Evolutionary drivers of parasite-induced changes in insect life-history traits: from theory to underlying mechanisms. Advances in Parasitology 68, 85-110.

Nacer, A., Walker, K and Hurd, H. (2008). Localisation of laminin within Plasmodium berghei oocysts and the midgut epithelial cells of Anopheles stephensi. Parasites and Vectors 1: 33. doi 10.1186/1756-3305-1-33.

Carter, V., Nacer, A,M.L., Underhill, A, Sinden, R and Hurd, H. (2007). Minimum requirements for ookinete to oocyst transformation in Plasmodium. International Journal of Parasitology, 37, 1221-1232

e-mail: caep@keele.ac.uk
Last updated: 10 August 2009 13:18