Professor Stuart Reid
Department: Principal's Office
Campus: Hawkshead
Research Groups: Pathogen Flow in Ecosystems, Antimicrobial Resistance, IRLFS (Research Programme)
Principal, CEO and Chief Accountable Officer of the RVC with overall responsibility for strategic and operational leadership in all matters fiscal and academic.
Stuart Reid is President & Principal of the Royal Veterinary College (RVC), an autonomous member institution of the University of London federation. An academic with over 16 years’ experience in university senior management, he is a research-led, student-focused leader with a commitment to equality, equity and success for all those charged to his care. International in outlook, he has professional experience in Europe, Africa, North America and Australasia.
An alumnus of the University of Glasgow, he became one of its youngest professors in 1996 and dean in 2005 before moving to the RVC in 2011. Home to the oldest and largest veterinary school in the English-speaking world, the RVC is ranked as the top institution globally in the QS World University subject rankings. Through his tenure at the RVC, Reid has led a financial turnaround with 14 years of positive out-turn, a 70% increase in annual income, a 20% increase in student numbers and the initiation of new degree programmes internationally.
Reid is a recognised by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) as a specialist in veterinary epidemiology, and in veterinary public health by the European Board of Veterinary Specialists. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy. His research interests, always data driven and evidence based, have ranged from the use of informatics and advanced technologies in diagnostics and clinical decision making to zoonotic disease and antimicrobial resistance. He has over 160 scientific publications, including in PNAS, Science and Nature, and he has secured over £16M in competitive research funding during his career.
Reid was President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) in 2014-15, a year which saw the launch of a new Royal Charter, the introduction of the courtesy title of “Dr” for UK veterinarians, the embracing by the College of its international diaspora, and a far reaching overhaul of its 50 year old governance structures. In 2015, he ran the London marathon to raise awareness for mental health issues in the profession. He has also been president of the European College of Veterinary Public Health and honorary secretary of the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges, in both cases the first UK national to hold these positions.
In his public service, he was a trustee of The Donkey Sanctuary from 1996 and Chairman of Trustees from 2007 to 2022. The charity is now the largest of equine welfare organisation worldwide. He was a Trustee of the University of London (2014-2022) and sat on the Board of the Food Standards Agency in the UK 2017-2020.
Reid has been recognised for his work by industry (Pfizer, Petplan Charitable Trust), the profession (the British Veterinary Association’s Wooldridge Medal and the Dalrymple-Champneys Cup), his alma mater (the McCall Lecture, University of Glasgow) and his scientific discipline in the UK, EU and USA.
He was made a Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2018 for services to the veterinary profession and higher education, and in 2019 he was elected as a Fellow of the RCVS and an international member of the National Academy of Medicine in the USA. In 2024, he received the Queen’s Medal, the RCVS’s highest recognition.
With research interests in the application of quantitative epidemiological techniques to diseases of both animals and humans, Stuart has worked in Africa, Australia and the USA and has published over 130 papers and won over £15M in competitive grants. His most recent work, with others, on the One Health aspects of antimicrobial resistance in Salmonella appeared in Science and the Proceedings of the Royal Society and challenged some of the basic tenets of the origin and transmission of resistance.
Mellor, K C; Petrovska, L; Thomson, N R; Harris, K; Reid, S W J; Mather, A E.
Antimicrobial Resistance Diversity Suggestive of Distinct Salmonella Typhimurium Sources or Selective Pressures in Food-Production Animals.
Frontiers in Microbiology, 10. 2019
Mather, A.E., Reeve, R., Mellor, D.J., Matthews, L., Reid-Smith, R.J., Dutil, L., Haydon, D.T., Reid, S.W.J. (2016)
Detection of Rare Antimicrobial Resistance Profiles by Active and Passive Surveillance Approaches. PLoS One, 8:e0158515.
Nickbakhsh, S., Matthews, L., Reid, S.W.J. and Kao, R.R. (2014) A metapopulation model for highly pathogenic avian influenza: implications for compartmentalization as a control measure. Epidemiology and Infection, 5, 1-13.
Rich, K.M., Denwood, M.J., Stott, A.W., Mellor, D.J., Reid, S.W.J. and Gunn, G.J. (2013) Systems approaches to animal disease surveillance and resource allocation: methodological frameworks for behavioral analysis. PLoS One, 8,: e82019.
Matthews, L., Reeve, R., Gally, D.L., Low, J.C., Woolhouse, M.E., McAteer, S.P., Locking, M.E., Chase-Topping, M.E., Haydon, D.T., Allison, L.J., Hanson, M.F., Gunn, G.J. and Reid, S.W.J. (2013) Predicting the public health benefit of vaccinating cattle against Escherichia coli O157. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 110, 16265-70.
Mather, A.E., Reid, S.W.J., Maskell, D.J., Parkhill, J., Fookes, M.C., Harris, S.R., Brown D.J., Coia, J.E., Mulvey, M.R., Gilmour, M.W., Petrovska, L., de Pinna, E., Kuroda, M., Akiba, M., Izumiya, H., Connor, T.R., Suchard, M.A., Lemey, P., Mellor, D.J., Haydon, D.T. and Thomson. N.R. (2013) Distinguishable epidemics of multidrug-resistant Salmonella Typhimurium DT104 in different hosts. Science, 341 1514-7.
Reid, S.W.J. (2015) Antimicrobial resistance – One Health. Really? Society for General Microbiology, Birmingham, March 2015.
Reid, S.W.J. (2015) AMR, livestock and humans: Salmonella Typhimurium DT104. Federation of Infection Societies, Glasgow, November 2015.
Reid, S.W.J. (2015) The future of the veterinary profession – a UK perspective. Veterinary Ireland, November 2015.
Reid, S.W.J. (2015) AMR, livestock and humans - The “One Health” slot. British Veterinary Poultry Association, Manchester, November 2015.
Reid, S.W.J. (2016) Creating the One Health professional - Lessons from a multi- lingual, multi-cultural setting, National Academy of Medicine, Washington DC, April 2016.
Reid, S.W.J. (2016) One Health, antimicrobial wars and the resistance movement. Kansas State University, Kansas, April 2016,
Reid, S.W.J. (2016) The global picture of accreditation mechanisms for VEEs, and the value of improving them. OIE, Bangkok, Thailand, July 2016.
Reid, S.W.J. (2016) Cell phone coverage, jigsaws and the future of the planet. Purdue University, Indiana, USA, November 2016.
Reid, S.W.J. (2017) The Future of Veterinary Education University of Pretoria, South Africa, August 2017.
Reid, S.W.J. (2017) Oscar W Schalm Memorial Lecture, part 1: One Health, Small profession. Big problem. Davis, USA, October 2017
Reid, S.W.J. (2017) Oscar W Schalm Memorial Lecture, part 2: Antimicrobial wars and the resistance movement – back to the future. Davis, USA, October 2017
Other Interests Held | Position |
The Donkey Sanctuary |
Chairman of Trustees |
Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, Council |
Member |
Food Standards Agency |
Board Member |
University of London, Board of Trustees |
Trustee |
University of London, Safety Committee |
Chairman |
University of London, Estates Committee |
Member |
University of London, Remuneration Committee |
Member |
Animal Care Trust |
Trustee - ex-officio |
LBIC [RVC Subsidiary] |
Director |
RVC (Hong Kong) Ltd [RVC Subsidiary] |
Director |
RVC Developments Ltd [RVC Subsidiary] |
Director |