Andrew Darwin is a member of the board of directors for the Vilcek Foundation. At NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Darwin was a member of the Department of Microbiology’s Vilcek Endowment Fellowship Selection Committee from 2007 to 2010 and has served on the Vilcek Leadership Advisory Committee of the Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences from 2024 to present.

A professor in the Department of Microbiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Darwin’s research focuses on understanding cell envelope functions of Gram-negative bacterial pathogens that can impact virulence. Initially, Darwin’s laboratory examines a cell envelope stress response system in Yersinia enterocolitica, but in recent years has transitioned to the study of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a germ that causes devastating infections, especially in hospital patients and individuals suffering from Cystic Fibrosis. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

Darwin has played a leading role as a Graduate Advisor of Microbiology in NYU Grossman’s Microbiology PhD training program since 2016 and as an instructor of Microbiology to PhD students and medical students since 2002. He has served on over 30 thesis and fellowship committees. Outside of NYU, Darwin has been an invited teacher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Rockefeller University, Dartmouth Medical School, the Wadsworth Center in Albany, and Hunter College CUNY. He has also given numerous research lectures at other institutions.

In addition to being named a distinguished lecturer for the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), Darwin served on the ASM Publishing Committee and as the leader of the ASM Molecular Biology and Physiology Track for the Microbe Meeting Planning Committee. He was the co-editor of the book “Regulation of Bacterial Virulence”, published by ASM Press in 2013.

In 2007, Darwin received a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award. In 2020, Darwin was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the Journal of Bacteriology also named him as that year’s recipient of the Jack Kenney Award for Outstanding Service. 

Darwin was born and raised in North West England. He graduated with a B.Sc. (1st Class Hons.) in Biochemistry from the University of Liverpool, where he also received the Derby Undergraduate Scholarship for academic excellence for two consecutive years. He earned a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Birmingham before moving to the USA to complete his postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Microbiology at Cornell University. Darwin was then a research associate in the Department of Microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine, before obtaining his faculty position at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.