Supervisors: Dr Kate Baker, Dr Malcolm Horsburgh and Dr Timothy Blower

I graduated in 2018 from the University of Liverpool with a first-class Microbiology Degree. During my time as an undergraduate I completed two research placements within Dr Mal Horsburgh’s research group focusing on the skin microbiota, in particular Staphylococcus aureus. Currently I am completing a microbial genomics based PhD as part of Dr Kate Baker’s research group. My project utilises a historical isolate collection known as the Murray Collection and several hundred modern isolates. The Murray collection consists of several hundred Enterobacteriaceae strains which were collected during the pre-antibiotic era (1917-1954), including over 90 Shigella isolates. Through bioinformatic analysis of these isolates I am characterizing the genetic composition of Shigella over the past 100 years.

Project Title: What factors contribute to the long-term persistence of the Shigella species as pathogens?

Other activities

Presented a poster at the annual Microbiology Society Conference in Belfast. Attended the Taming in BEAST2 eh! Course in Vancouver, Canada. Co-authored a mini-review paper in the Journal of clinical microbiology, American Society of Microbiology – “Looking backwards to move forward: the utility of sequencing historical bacterial genomes”