Dr Andrew Sails is a Consultant Clinical Scientist at the Public Health England Microbiology Services Laboratory in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he is Head of Molecular Diagnostics and Research and Development. He graduated in Biology from Manchester University in 1991 and began his clinical microbiology career at Preston Public Health Laboratory. Further postgraduate study resulted in a Masters degree in Biomedical Science from Manchester Metropolitan University and a PhD in Medical Microbiology from the University of Central Lancashire. He carried out postdoctoral research the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, USA research into the development of DNA sequence-based subtyping of Campylobacter and other pathogenic foodborne bacteria. He returned to the UK in 2003 to take up his current post at Newcastle, where is Head of Molecular Diagnostics and leads the development and evaluation of new technology and methods for microbiological diagnosis, identification and typing of microbial pathogens. In 2004 he was awarded the W.H. Pierce Memorial Prize for outstanding contributions to bacteriology by The Society for Applied Microbiology.

He has worked extensively in the area of molecular diagnostics and molecular epidemiology of infectious disease (M. tuberculosis, Campylobacter and C. difficile in particular) and has published in these areas. His current research interests include the detection and fingerprinting of pathogens and the application of molecular biology to clinical microbiology to aid the diagnosis and management of infectious disease. He has served on the editorial board of several journals including Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and the Open Microbiology Journal. He is a member of several learned societies including Society for Applied Microbiology, The Federation of Clinical Scientists, The Association of Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine and is an affiliate member of the Royal College of Pathologists. Since 2005 he has been a member of The Society for Applied Microbiology Executive Committee and is currently serving as its Honorary Meetings Secretary. He was also recently appointed as a Visiting Fellow at Northumbria University where he is contributes to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and PhD supervision.