Lamar Dodd Creative Research Award 2021

M. Stephen Trent, UGA Foundation Distinguished Professor of Infectious Diseases, is a driving force and an international leader in the area of bacterial cell surfaces and cell envelope biology. His work has affected the development of novel antibiotics and the generation of vaccines, providing a broader understanding of bacterial pathogenesis for the treatment of infectious diseases. He exploits a wide range of bacterial pathogen prototypes, representing different modes of infection, to highlight unique questions in cell envelope biology and bacterial surface remodeling. He has developed a series of complementary, innovative and well-funded projects that ask leading-edge questions in pathogen biology. The impressive breadth of microorganisms under investigation by his team is matched by successful integrations of multidisciplinary approaches ranging from animal models of infection to genomics, enzymology and structural biology. As a result, his work has offered detailed mechanistic investigations, as well as important broader insights that have afforded major advances.