Siouxsie Wiles Biography
Siouxsie Wiles MNZM is a microbiologist and scientific communicator from the United Kingdom. Her areas of expertise include infectious illnesses and bioluminescence. She lives in New Zealand.
How old is Siouxsie Wiles? – Age
Wiles was born in the United Kingdom and raised in both the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Siouxsie Wiles Family
Her mother is a retired social worker, while her father has his own business. Wiles moved to Imperial College London for a post-doctoral research job on tuberculosis after finishing her Ph.D. In 2007, she joined Imperial College’s Department of Infectious Diseases and Immunity as a lecturer, and in 2009, she was awarded a Sir Charles Hercus Fellowship from the Health Research Council of New Zealand, which allowed her to move to the University of Auckland. Wiles is the director of the Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab at the institution.
Siouxsie Wiles Education
Wiles earned a BSc(Hons) in Medical Microbiology from the University of Edinburgh in 1997. She won a Nuffield Scholarship as a student and worked in the university’s School of Biological Sciences. Wiles earned her Ph.D. from Edinburgh Napier University while undertaking research at Oxford’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (formerly known as the Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology).
During her Ph.D., Wiles first employed bioluminescence to develop biosensors for monitoring the health of beneficial bacteria in the environment.
Siouxsie Wiles Husband
Wiles is married to Steven Galbraith, a mathematics professor at the University of Auckland, and the couple has a daughter. She met her New Zealander spouse in London and left her employment at Imperial College London in 2009 to go to New Zealand. In 2014, Wiles was granted New Zealand citizenship.
Siouxsie Wiles Net Worth
She has an estimated net worth of $2 million.
Siouxsie Wiles Blog
Wiles claims in a 2013 blog post that the name “Siouxsie” is derived from singer Siouxsie Sioux, lead singer of the band Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Wiles gained global prominence on September 10, 2021, after right-wing blogger Cameron Slater shared a video of her socializing with a buddy at an Auckland beach amid an Alert Level 4 lockdown in the Auckland Region in reaction to the August 2021 Delta variant community breakout. Slater claimed Wiles and her buddy violated lockdown regulations, with the tale spreading on various right-wing blogs.
Siouxsie Wiles Antibiotic Resistance
Wiles is also looking for novel antibiotics by screening 10,000 novel Zealand fungus for potential medical use. Wiles’ 2017 book Antibiotic Resistance: The End of Modern Medicine? addressed the growing global problem of antibiotic resistance. Professor Kurt Krause, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Otago, praised the book as “a clear call to action for New Zealanders on one of the most critical issues we face.” The book “[…]Antibiotic Resistance will provide an excellent tutorial for those who know there’s cause for concern but need some extra background to understand why,” comments Sarah-Jane O’Connor of the Science Media Centre.
Siouxsie Wiles Bioluminescent Superbugs
Wiles directs the University of Auckland’s Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab, which studies how illuminating bacteria can help us comprehend microbial illnesses like food poisoning, TB, and hospital superbugs.
Because only living bacteria emit light, bioluminescence is utilized to accelerate the process of generating new antibiotics by utilizing the light emitted by bacteria. “My career has been built on making nasty bacteria bioluminescent and using them for all sorts of things, including finding new medicines,” Wiles says of her work. In wealthy countries, New Zealand has some of the highest rates of infectious illnesses. Every year, 700,000 individuals worldwide die as a result of drug-resistant infections.
