Sir Henry Dale Fellowship

I am pleased to report that I have been awarded a Wellcome Trust and Royal Society funded Sir Henry Dale Fellowship. The subject of the fellowship, to be held in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford, is Statistical Methods for Whole Genome Phenotype Mapping in Bacterial Populations.

The project addresses the question of how to detect genes or mutations in bacteria responsible for variability in important traits such as the tendency to cause human disease. Focusing on the hospital-associated pathogens Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile, the project has the potential to help identify genetic variants that explain why some bacteria cause more severe infections, knowledge that could help develop new drugs and tests that improve patient treatment.

The fellowship runs for five years, and includes support for a postdoctoral research assistant and laboratory costs. I will be advertising a position shortly. If you are interested, please get in touch.

I want to thank the funders and reviewers for supporting this project, and my colleagues who helped me write and re-write the research proposal.