School of Biosciences

Research Overview

I am a genome biologist who is primarily focused on examining questions relating to bacterial pathogens.  I have a particular interest in the Enterobacteriaceae – E coli, Salmonella, Shigella, Yersinia and Klebsiella species – in Clostridium difficile and in understanding the human microbiota of the gastrointestinal tract. In addition I am also involved in work looking at questions in Cholera, Neisseria, Campylobacter, and Pseudomonas.

My work sits at the interface of microbiology, epidemiology, population genetics, genomics, phylogenetics, computer science and mathematics.  Because many of the core narratives of bacterial pathogens are common across the bacterial tree of life, the methods that I use (and in some cases, have developed) are broadly applicable, and can be used to answer questions at a varying range of levels; from those at a very broad level, across genera, to those at a very focused level for example, understanding the spread of a particular lineage of a particular pathogen within a country, or even a hospital.