W. Bruce Turnbull BSc, PhD

Professor Bruce Turnbull was a synthetic chemist with interests in glycoscience and synthetic biology. Turnbull graduated with a BSc in Chemistry from the University of St Andrews in 1995, where Turnbull also started Bruce research career in glycoscience during Bruce PhD working with Professor Rob Field, graduating in 1999. Turnbull was awarded a Wellcome Trust International Prize Travelling Research Fellowship (IPTRF) to work on multivalent glycans with Professor Sir Fraser Stoddart FRS at UCLA.

Turnbull then joined the lab of Professor Steve Homans, School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds in 2001 on the return leg of Bruce IPTRF. There, Turnbull gained expertise in biophysical methods to complement Bruce previous training in synthetic chemistry. In 2004 Turnbull moved across campus to the School of Chemistry as a lecturer and research fellow before being awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2005. During this time Turnbull developed a broad research programme in the use of chemical and enzymatic methods to make and modify carbohydrates and proteins for use in targeted delivery and synthetic biology.

Turnbull supervised 20 PhD students and Turnbull is a co-director of the Wellcome Trust PhD scheme at the University of Leeds, where Turnbull also programme manager for our MSc in Chemical Biology and Drug Design. Bruce research has always been collaborative, both through Bruce membership in the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds and also through a series of European and UK research networks. Turnbull chaired an EU COST Action network (CM1102 MultiGlycoNano; 2011-15) that brought together over 60 research groups from 21 countries to pursue interdisciplinary projects in ‘multivalent glycol systems for nanoscience’. Through leading this COST Action, Turnbull oversaw the organisation of 5 international conferences and 3 international postgraduate training schools.