Robin Nicholas had a long and varied career at the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (now Animal and Plant Health Agency, Weybridge) beginning in 1975 and leaving at the end of 2014. He led the Mycoplasma Group in the Department of Bacterial Diseases for over 20 years which he expanded to a group of 12 researchers working on research and surveillance of mycoplasma diseases of livestock. The Group became an OIE reference centre for small ruminant mycoplasmas and UK reference laboratory for mycoplasmas. As the major mycoplasma diseases such as contagious bovine and caprine pleuropneumonia and contagious agalactia are exotic to the UK, he travelled widely including many trips to Mediterranean countries, in particular Turkey, Portugal and Italy where he has close links with institutes in Sicily, Padua, Teramo and Rome. He also conducted technical missions to Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and Asia and was a member of the FAO and EU groups of experts on contagious bovine pleuropneumonia. He lectures at the new veterinary school at Surrey University and has written five books including “Mycoplasma Protocols” (1998) and “Mycoplasma Diseases of Ruminants” (2008) and over 250 peer-reviewed papers and articles in the field for which he was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists for published works in 2006 and awarded a visiting Professorship in Life Sciences by Kingston University in 2010. Today he provides consultancy on animal mycoplasmoses to several Italian institutes and is a member of a number of international commissions. Since 2017 he has been advising the New Zealand government on their eradication campaign for Mycoplasma bovis.

Details of publications can be found at:

http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jxrfzyAAAAAJ&hl=en

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robin_Nicholas/