Ian Andrew Wilson is the Hansen Professor of Structural Biology and chair of the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology[1][2] at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, United States.
[3] He then did postdoctoral research at Harvard University with Don Craig Wiley from 1977 to 1982 during which he solved the first crystal structure of the influenza virus hemagglutinin.
His laboratory focuses on the recognition of microbial pathogens by the immune system and has determined over 85 crystal structures of mouse, human, shark, and catalytic antibodies, with a variety of antigens, including steroids, peptides, carbohydrates and viral proteins, such as HIV-1 and Hepatitis C virus envelope glycoproteins.
[5] His team was reported by the 6 February 2004 edition of Science magazine to have managed to synthesise the hemagglutinin protein responsible for the 1918 outbreak of Spanish flu.
[7] He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2000, a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2008, a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in 2016.