Molecular epidemiology of zoonotic and emerging pathogens, antimicrobial resistance, surveillance and disease control, One Health.

I qualified as a veterinary surgeon from the University of Cambridge with BA (Hons) Pathology in 1991 and Vet MB, MRCVS in 1994. Following a year at the University of Oxford studying the epidemiology of human infectious disease, I spent a short period in mixed clinical practice before moving to the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Medicine, Edinburgh in 1996 to study for a doctorate, investigating the early immune response to Fasciola hepatica infection in cattle. I continued at the University of Edinburgh as a post-doctoral researcher (Professor Mark Woolhouse’s group), on projects investigating the risk of zoonotic disease importation by pets into the UK, and on the molecular epidemiology of antimicrobial resistant commensal and pathogenic Escherichia coli in cattle. Between 2005-2015 I took a ten year career break to raise a family, and returned to research with a Wellcome Trust Career Re-entry Fellowship (2015-2022), investigating the epidemiology of Shiga toxin positive non-O157 E.coli on farms throughout the UK.

I am currently leading a national consortium BBSRC 3-year award "Intended and unintended consequences of the ZnO ban from pig diets on antimicrobial resistance, post-weaning diarrhoea and the microbiome" (2024-2027).  My main interests lie in the fields of infectious disease epidemiology, AMR, and One Health.