Graham Hatfull, Eberly Family Professor of Biotechnology and HHMI Professor in the University of Pittsburgh Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of sciences and an organization of international scholars. Up to 73 new fellows are selected each year out of a pool of 800 candidates.
Hatfull’s lab, which focuses on the potential role of mycobacteriophages that kill bacteria and halt deadly infections that are otherwise resistant or unresponsive to antibiotics, contains the largest refrigerated catalogue of these phages in the United States, if not the world.
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In 2022, the lab co-authored three research papers about phages’ success in patients with deadly infections. Hatfull also received a lifetime achievement award from the European Society of Mycobacteriology in 2023, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2024.
Innovative research
Additionally, Hatfull’s work on the SEA-PHAGES program with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has encouraged college professors around the country — including at Pitt and Pitt-Greensburg — to bring innovative research into classrooms.
Hatfull completed his undergraduate studies in biological sciences at the University of London and graduate studies in molecular biology at the University of Edinburgh. Following postdoctoral research at Yale University and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, he joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1988.
The Royal Society was founded in the 17th century during Europe’s Scientific Revolution. Its early members include Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle and John Locke.
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