Under her leadership, Wellcome purchased Hinxton Hall in Cambridgeshire in the early 1990s and established the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Campus, playing a pivotal role in the Human Genome Project and ensuring publicly accessible genome sequencing data while also hosting the European Bioinformatics Institute at Hinxton Genome Campus.

She held influential leadership roles at the Wellcome Trust (now Wellcome), expanding its funding and influence in biomedical research and helping found the Wellcome Sanger Institute, a major genomics and data science center in Hinxton, UK.

Bridget Ogilvie was a pioneering parasitologist who studied how parasites evade host immune defenses by altering parasite protein expression in response to host antibodies, with early work focusing on helminths like roundworms and tapeworms.

Her interest in parasitology grew from a rural upbringing on a sheep farm in northern New South Wales, Australia, through a bush school and a girls’ boarding school, culminating in a top-of-class rural science degree at the University of New England in Armidale in 1960.

Ogilvie was a committed science communicator and public engager, helping to establish Sense About Science to promote sound science and evidence-based public discourse.

She earned a PhD at the University of Cambridge on the life cycle of the parasite Nippostrongylus brasiliensis and its interactions with the host immune system, then moved to the National Institute for Medical Research in London to gain immunology experience, collaborating with Ita Askonas and Michael Parkhouse.

In 1979, Ogilvie joined the Wellcome Trust on a sabbatical that became a permanent role, rising to director from 1991 to 1998 and presiding over rapid expansion and a major funding boost in 1995 following the sale of a linked pharmaceutical company.