The Foott Memorial Lecture is being delivered by
PROF. SIR STEPHEN HOLGATE, CBE, BSc, MB BS, MD, DSc, CSc (hon), FRCP, FRCP (Edin), FRCPath, FAAAAI, FACAAI FEAACI, FERS, MAE, FMedSci.
Medical Research Council Clinical Professor of Immunopharmacology at the Faculty of Medicine, Southampton

His research interests include immunopharmacology, allergy, asthma and pollution.[2][9][7][10] In 1980, after completing a 2 year post doctoral fellowship with K Frank Austen at the Robert Brigham Hospital and Harvard University, Boston provided by the Dorothy Temple Cross MRC endowment and the Wellcome Trust he returned to the University of Southampton to pursue a research career in asthma and allied disorders. This was focused on the causes of human asthma and its treatment. After establishing the key role that mast cells and other key effector cells play in triggering the acute allergic inflammatory response in asthma, he pursued the mechanisms of asthma chronicity and variability across the lifecourse. He has utilised many approaches to study asthma including epidemiology, genetics, pathology, microbiology and immunology, pharmacology and experimental medicine.