Iain studied for his first degree in Biochemistry at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where he stayed on to complete a PhD in microbial physiology, supervised by Dr Norman Shaw. Subsequent post-doctoral research notably included working with Professor Roy Russell and a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship in Taxonomy (both in the Department of Oral Biology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne). He was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sunderland from 1996-2004 before moving to Northumbria, where he was promoted to Reader (2005), then Chair of Microbiology in 2007. In 2012, he was appointed Research Lead for the Department of Applied Sciences And he leads the Cellular & Molecular Sciences research area within Northumbria University.

Sangal, Vartul, Goodfellow, Michael, Jones, Amanda, Schwalbe, Ed, Blom, Jochen, Hoskisson, Paul and Sutcliffe, Iain (2016) Next-generation systematics: An innovative approach to resolve the structure of complex prokaryotic taxa. Scientific Reports, 6. p. 38392. ISSN 2045-2322 Blanc, L., Castanier, R., Mishra, A., Ray, A., Besra, G.S., Sutcliffe, I., Vercellone, A. and J. Nigou (2013). Gram-positive bacteria lipoglycans based on a glycosylated diacylglycerol lipid anchor are microbe-associated molecular patterns recognized by TLR2. PLOS One, in press (PONE-D-13-36017). Sutcliffe, I.C., Harrington, D.J. and M.I. Hutchings (2012). A phylum level analysis reveals lipoprotein biosynthesis to be a fundamental property of bacteria. Protein & Cell 3, 163-170 (Invited Perspective). Sutcliffe, I.C., Trujillo, M.E. and M. Goodfellow (2012). A call to arms for systematists: revitalising the purpose and practises underpinning the description of novel microbial taxa. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 101: 13-20. Widdick, D.A., Hicks, M.G., Thompson, B.J., Tschumi, A., Chandra, G., Sutcliffe, I.C.,Brülle, J.K., Sander, P., Palmer, T. and M.I. Hutchings (2011). Dissecting the complete lipoprotein biogenesis pathway in Streptomyces. Molecular Microbiology 80: 1395-1412. Sutcliffe, I.C. (2010) A phylum level perspective on bacterial cell envelope architecture. Trends in Microbiology 18: 464-470. Thompson, B.J., Widdick, D.A., Hicks, M.G.,Chandra, G., Sutcliffe, I.C., Palmer, T. and M.I. Hutchings (2010). Investigating lipoprotein biogenesis and function in the model Gram-positive bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor. Molecular Microbiology 77: 943-957. Yang, Q., Zhang, M., Harrington, D.J., Black G.W. and I.C. Sutcliffe (2010). A proteomic investigation of Streptococcus agalactiae grown under conditions associated with neonatal exposure reveals the upregulation of the putative virulence factor C protein β antigen. International Journal of Medical Microbiology 300: 331-337.