Image credit: Tom Humberstone


We study how organisms respond to their environment, focusing on molecular mechanisms used by fungi. We collect and analyze genome-scale datasets to understand how fungi dynamically reorganize their RNA and protein to adapt to environmental change. This includes how fungi adapt to infect human hosts.

Disambiguation: This is the Edward Wallace Lab studying RNA and Systems Biology in Fungi. It is not to be confused with the Stephen Wallace Lab studying Chemical and Synthetic Biology, also in Edinburgh.

Help us to understand how fungi cause disease, by bringing data-driven engineering biology and cool fluorescent protein tools into fungal pathogens.

We seek to recruit a postdoctoral scientist in Engineering Biology. The job will focus on developing a pan-fungal molecular bioimaging toolbox including fluorescent labelled fungal pathogen strains that can reveal previously hidden aspects of fungal biology. The post holder will take a lead on computational/bioinformatic aspects of strain engineering, and designing and analysing experiments to investigate these strains, collaborating with experimental and computational scientists across the team to answer the project’s overarching research questions. This would be a god opportunity for an engineering biologist to move into fungal biology or medical mycology.

The successful candidate will be part of an interdisciplinary, intercontinental team that aims to develop and democratise the study and imaging of fungal pathogens through a newly funded long-term programme, entitled ‘Removing Barriers to Fungal Bioimaging for the Global Medical Mycology Community’. See press release from Edinburgh Infectious Diseases.

The job advert should be listed soon on the University of Edinburgh’s job site, and I’ll add the link here. We expect applications to close 30 September and interviews in October 2026.

Please email Edward if you’re interested - see the join page for suggestions.

Posted 15 Aug 2026 by Edward

Congratulations to MSc project students Carolina Campos Quiroz, Isa Haque-Bousquet, Likai Shi, and Ziran Zhou. This year’s MSc projects addressed evolution of pseudoenzymes - functional proteins that are structurally related to enzymes, but whose modern-day function is different from the ancestral enzymatic function.

Posted 14 Aug 2026 by Edward

Welcome to MSc project student Lloyd Morgan! Lloyd’s MSc project works with Benny, to understand RNA-binding proteins in Cryptococcus neoformans.

Posted 01 May 2025 by Edward

Welcome to honours students! This year’s students are focusing on some protein evolution projects, jointly supervised with Atlanta Cook.

Posted 10 Jan 2025 by Edward