Institute of Continuing Education (ICE)
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Professor Tom Monie is the Senior Tutor at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge. He is responsible for the education and wellbeing of over 400 undergraduate and around 300 postgraduate students.
He is a Professor of Pure and Applied Biomedical Sciences and a protein biochemist by training with a long-standing interest in infection, immunity and genetics. Previously he has run a research group investigating the shapes and structures of molecules involved in recognising bacterial infection and has overseen and taught on a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the biological and medical sciences. These include courses in Genetics, Evolutionary Biology, Infection and Immunity, Medical Education, Genomic Medicine and Healthcare Data amongst others. Tom's extensive experience in teaching within the University includes undergraduate supervisions, practical classes and lectures along with a wide-range of postgraduate teaching and the education of adult and professional learners. His research publication topics have included topics such as cat allergy- which was a global media story- Crohn's Disease, inherited auto-inflammatory genetic diseases, species variation in immunity and inflammation, and protein function in the immune system.
Many students have benefitted from his involvement in a wide range of teaching activities targeted at the provisions of subject-specific and transferable skills for graduate students. Tom is a firm believer that learning should be fun, that student participation is central to this process, and that successful teaching requires responsiveness to the needs of the students. He aims to instil these elements into his teaching and engagement activities.
Tom’s long standing interests in the biology of diseases and protein biochemistry are successfully combined through his research investigating how the innate immune system detects and responds to danger. He held a prestigious Wellcome Trust Fellowship from 2008 to 2014 to study two members, NOD1 and NOD2, of the NLR family of cytoplasmic immune receptors.
Tom’s current research focuses on studying protein:protein interactions to work out how innate immune signalling pathways function. This includes continuing to work out the mechanism by which NOD1 and NOD2 detect and respond to danger, and how mutations in the NOD2 protein lead to the development of autoinflammatory conditions such as Crohn’s Disease and Blau Syndrome.
Tom uses a range of experimental approaches in his research including computational modelling of protein structure to work out the impact of mutations on their structure and function.
Member of the Biochemical Society
Member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Biological Chemistry
Editorial Board Member of Molecular Innate Immunity, Frontiers in Immunology
Editorial Board Member of Inflammation, Frontiers in Immunology
