Dr Siouxsie Wiles

Dr Siouxsie Wiles is an award-winning scientist who has made a career of manipulating microbes. She still can’t quite believe she gets paid to do this for a living.

Siouxsie is an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland where she and her team make bacteria glow in the dark to understand how infectious microbes make us sick and to find new medicines. She is also an enthusiastic tweeter, blogger, artist, curator and media science commentator and has won numerous prizes for her efforts, including the Prime Minister’s Science Media Communication Prize and the Royal Society Te Apārangi’s Callaghan Medal.

In 2016, Siouxsie was named a Blake Leader by the Sir Peter Blake Trust, and in 2018 was one of three finalists for the Kiwibank New Zealander of Year award. She recently published her first book, Antibiotic resistance: the end of modern medicine?