Obituary: Dr Tim Millar

Global-NAMRIP members are shocked and saddened to report the death of Dr Timothy Millar at 51 years of age, on Tuesday 20 September 2022 after a short illness.

Tim’s accomplishments in pharmacology and vascular biology are widely known and reported on the University of Southampton website.

Tim was a valued member of NAMRIP’s Steering Group, and was actively involved in all aspects of the network. This included leading projects across disciplines tackling infection and AMR. In Round 7 of NAMRIP’s pump priming competitions, he won “Infective endocarditis, biofilms and haematogenous spread of disease” with Myron Christodoulides (from the Faculty of Medicine) and Neil Bressloff and Dario Carugo (from the School of Engineering).

However, it is for his outstanding generosity of spirit and time for which he will most be remembered in NAMRIP. Central to our mission is taking the time to understand others, and enter into a dialogue with them, bridging between ourselves and their disciplines, backgrounds, interests, knowledge base and needs. Doing this well takes humility, empathy, kindness, and a profound understanding of science. Whether Tim was reaching across disciplines to experts, talking to end-users, or to members of the public, or to students of all ages, he was an exemplar for these qualities.

Tim was a great supporter of Early Career Researchers, giving freely of his knowledge. He was an exemplar of enthusiasm and kindness with young people, for example when talking to student after student at their posters as a judge at NAMRIP’s Festival of Early Career Research in AMR. 

Tim earned his AMR Research Superhero T-shirt after an exhausting night at the London Science Museum in 2018, where 1000 members of the public queued around the block to gain late-night entrance to the museum to speak to a team from NAMRIP, and other ‘AMR Research Superheroes’ as the Museum badged the volunteers.

Mrs Yvonne Richardson, Global-NAMRIP’s manager until her retirement in 2021, shared these memories:

“Raising public awareness of the issue of AMR was central to NAMRIP and Tim was enthusiastic about this, supporting the NAMRIP exhibit at various venues including a very busy evening spent talking to members of the public at the London Science Museum and children at the University of Southampton Science & Engineering Days. These events, all held in the evening or at weekends, relied on volunteers and Tim was always a willing supporter, carrying out these activities with good grace. Tim also developed his own exhibit based on ‘Developing devices to tackle infections in heart valves’ which was a great success at the NAMRIP Summer Conference attended by Lord O’Neill."

“Asking for volunteers or support for NAMRIP’s activities was never an easy task, given everyone’s existing high workload. However, I could always count on Tim’s support, without any fuss and a big smile, for which I was very grateful”. 

We pass our sincere condolences to his wife and two sons.