Dr Martin Dougherty

Former Chief Operating Officer

Alumni

This person is a member of Sanger Institute Alumni.

Martin Dougherty was Chief Operating Officer at the Wellcome Sanger Institute from 2014 to 2024. He is now COO at NIAB (National Institute of Agricultural Botany) and can be contacted at: martin.dougherty@niab.com.

This page is no longer being updated and is being maintained as a historical record of Martin’s time at the Institute.

Martin was accountable for leadership across a range of management and support functions underpinning the research programmes and Genome Campus operations. These include areas such as HR and organisational development, finance and H&S, through to capital projects, facilities management and research administration.

My ambition is to deliver cost effective management operations to our research teams that match their world leading capabilities. An organisation like the Sanger Institute should be led by the needs of the science and the mantra in Management Operations is to provide simple and effective services that reduce the administrative burden on our researchers, so they can focus on what they do best!

As a senior manager at the Sanger Institute I like to ensure people realise I am approachable. A wise consultant once told me the higher you are in an organisation the less you know about how it actually runs. One way to guard against this is to have a truly “open door” policy!

My timeline

• Became Chief Operating Officer at NIAB (National Institute of Agricultural Botany)

• Chief Operating Officer - Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Genome Campus

• Chief Operating Officer at Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology. I had responsibility for leading many of the scientific services and facilities as well as the support functions and business processes at the Institute. We successfully completed the construction and then transitioned 600+ researchers, support staff and their equipment to the new laboratories on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

• Executive Director at Royal Statistical Society. I led a learned and professional body with 7,500 members. Advancing the science and application of statistics, and promoting use and awareness for public benefit.

• Executive Director at RCOG - National Collaborating Centre for Women’s and Children’s Health. Running a health service research team developing clinical and cost-effectiveness guidelines for NICE. My host institute was the Royal College Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

• Director/owner at Pyxis Medical Communications. Providing a marketing and communication service to medical charities and the pharmaceutical industry. Created start-up business with two colleagues.

• I was awarded my PhD from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1994 and took up a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship to continue my research into the semiochemistry of the sandfly vector of cutaneous Leishmaniasis.