Professor Guy Poppy (CB FMedSci) has announced he is to leave the University of Southampton after 23 years, to become Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Bristol.
Professor Poppy, who will take up the post at Bristol on 1 October 2024, is a graduate of Imperial College London and the University of Oxford. He worked at Rothamsted Research, where he held pivotal roles as Higher, Senior and Principal Scientific Officer, before joining the University of Southampton in 2001, where he has served as Associate Vice-President for interdisciplinary research and as Head of the School of Biological Sciences. He drove forward our interdisciplinary research agenda through the creation of a new interdisciplinary research track and interdisciplinary hub and strongly believes that the most pressing issues facing us today can only be solved through interdisciplinary work.
Professor Poppy has also served as Deputy Executive Chair, and later Interim Executive Chair, of the BBSRC, supporting strategic developments, linking bioscience to other disciplines and working collaboratively with partners across UKRI and more broadly. He was awarded the Companion of the Order of the Bath in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2021 and made a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2022.
Everyone at the University of Southampton wishes Professor Poppy all the best in his new role at the University of Bristol.