Overview

Cohort: 7
PhD start date: October 2023

I went to medical school at Imperial College London where I intercalated in Medical Sciences and Global Health.

After completing foundation training I studied for an MSc in Infectious Disease Immunology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. This led to a clinical research fellow post at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit in The Gambia where I researched the association between live attenuated influenza vaccine replication and immunogenicity.

I then completed my core medical training in Portsmouth before taking up a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Academic Clinical Fellow post in Infectious Diseases and Virology in Sheffield. My most recent academic focus has been on using viral genetic sequencing to track transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within hospitals as part of the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium.

PhD title

Establishing the role of inflammatory memory as a key host defence mechanism in the upper respiratory tract following viral infection.

Brief summary of PhD project

Recent advances in immunology have shown that memory of previously encountered bacteria and viruses is not just isolated to the immune system. Epithelial cells that make up the lining of the nose, skin and intestines are now known to undergo persistent change after inflammation, resulting in altered responses to future exposures. My PhD will investigate the changes which occur within epithelial cells of the nose after recovery from viral infections, and what impact this has on subsequent respiratory infections.

Key collaborators/supervisors

• Professor Thushan de Silva (The University of Sheffield)
• Professor Colin Bingle (The University of Sheffield)
• Dr Christopher Duncan (Newcastle University)
• Dr Daniel Rico (Newcastle University)
• Dr José Ordovás-Montañés (Harvard University)

Specialty interest/techniques

• Infectious Diseases
• Virology
• Immunology
• Transcriptomics
• Epigenomics
• Air-liquid interface culture

Career aspirations

My ultimate goal is to become a clinician-scientist who works at the interface between biomedical research and clinical medicine. I’d like to be able to translate knowledge gained in the research laboratory towards improving diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases.

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