Professor Mark Buttner, an Emeritus Fellow at the John Innes Centre, has received the Microbiology Society’s Marjory Stephenson Prize for 2026.

This career award, given for exceptional contributions to the discipline of microbiology, will be presented at the Microbiology Society Annual Conference in April next year.

For most of his influential career at the John Innes Centre, Professor Buttner and his research group have studied development (the production of spores) in Streptomyces, bacteria that are a leading source of antibiotics. As part of this work, he pioneered Streptomyces venezuelae as a new model system for these bacteria.

Unlike most Streptomyces species, S. venezuelae produces spores in liquid culture, greatly facilitating the application of global omics techniques and fluorescence time-lapse imaging to the study of development.

Professor Buttner said: “I have been very fortunate to have had a succession of highly motivated and talented people work in my lab, and they, along with my collaborators, deserve much of the credit for this award.”

He added: “As a PhD student, I gave my first public seminar at a Microbiology Society meeting in Sheffield in 1984, so my links with the Society go all the way back to the beginning of my career.”

Professor Buttner came to the Streptomyces group at the John Innes Centre in Norwich as a post-doctoral researcher in 1985, joining the lab of Professor Mervyn Bibb FRS, now also a JIC Emeritus Fellow. He was appointed to a permanent position in 1996 and became Head of the Department of Molecular Microbiology in 2012.

Professor Buttner was nominated by two of his former post-doctoral researchers; Professor Matt Hutchings, now Head of Department at the John Innes Centre, and Professor Paul Hoskisson, now at the University of Strathclyde.

“Mark has been a great mentor, and 12 of his former group members have gone on to run their own successful research groups around the world,” said Professor Hutchings.

Established in 1953, the prize is named after the Society’s co-founder and former President Marjory Stephenson (1947–1948), who, in 1945, was one of the first two women to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.