Robert Wilkinson is a Wellcome Senior Clinical Fellow and Senior Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute. His achievements have been in understanding the human immune response to tuberculosis, especially in the context of HIV-1 co-infection; and on translation of knowledge into novel intervention strategies. The latter half of his career to date has been spent in South Africa where tuberculosis is a leading cause of death. He has worked on both innate and acquired immune responses, notably on the anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial functions of vitamin D in tuberculosis which led to multiple clinical trials.