Alan McNally is a Professor in Microbial Genomics and works on the evolutionary genomics of pathogenesis and antimicrobial resistance in bacterial pathogens.  Alan has also been funded by the European Union, Medical Research Council and Royal Society.

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Alan has a strong belief in the collaborative nature of genomics research with active collaborations in the UK, China, Germany, France, Vietnam, and the US.

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During the COVID-19 outbreak, Alan was seconded to the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Lab as Infectious Disease lead at the Government’s first flagship COVID-19 testing facility. Launched on 9 April 2020, the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Lab was the first of three Government ‘mega-labs’ to be set-up across the UK, vastly increasing testing capacity and allowing tens of thousands more patient samples to be processed each day.

Clare Chandler is a Professor in Medical Anthropology and Director of the Antimicrobial Resistance Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

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Her expertise lie in the study of global health problems including antimicrobial resistance. She studies how such problems are configured, embodied and addressed across a range of actors in different spaces.

 

Her current research includes the ESRC funded Anti-Microbials In Society (AMIS) Programme with studies in Uganda and Thailand and AMIS Hub web platform, as well as the FCDO funded FIEBRE programme in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Myanmar.

Gerry Wright is a Professor of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University and a leader in the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

 

Dr. Wright received a BSc in Biochemistry and a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Waterloo and subsequently completed two years of postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School.

 

Dr. Wright is known for his role as Scientific Director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research and the David Braley Centre for Antibiotic Discovery, but has recently pivoted his focus to launching Canada’s Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biological Threats, of which he is the Inaugural Lead.

Nithima Sumpradit, a Senior Pharmacist, is the Head of Research and Development Unit, Medicines Regulation Division, Food and Drug Administration, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand.

 

She serves as a lead focal point for Thailand’s National Strategic Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance, program manager of the Royal Thai Government and WHO Country Cooperation Program on Antimicrobial Resistance, and originator of the Antibiotics Smart Use Project that later has been successfully integrated in national policies to reduce inappropriate use of antibiotics in Thailand.

Andrew C Singer is a Senior Scientist within the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology based in Wallingford, UK. He a molecular microbial ecologist with expertise in pollution chemistry and water quality modelling and mitigation.

 

He is PI on the National COVID-19 Wastewater-based Epidemiology Surveillance Programme (N-WESP) and serves on several government expert groups to help inform on wastewater-based COVID-19 surveillance.

 

Singer also leads on research focused on antimicrobial resistance in the environment and currently investigates catchment-scale analysis of antibiotic resistance and understanding their drivers in the environment.

 

He works internationally on research to understand AMR selection and transmission within a One Health perspective (e.g., Argentina, Malawi, Thailand and Uganda).

Simon J Foster is a Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Sheffield.

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Bacterial cell wall architecture and dynamics

The cell wall is essential for bacterial life and its synthesis is the target of crucial antibiotics such as penicillin and vancomycin. We determine the structure and function of the cell wall to elucidate not only how it permits cell growth but also how antibiotics lead to death. We use the infamous “super bug” Staphylococcus aureus as our target organism to address key fundamental questions of bacterial life and death.

 

Our primary goals are to:

• determine the molecular structure of the cell wall and how it changes during growth, at a resolution never previously achieved in any organism, using our world-leading microscopy approaches.

• use this information to then establish how the cell wall acts as the interface between a cell and its environment.

• bring together our findings to establish the basic mechanisms underpinning growth, the action of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance across bacteria.

Staphylococcus aureus disease

S. aureus is a major human pathogen of increasing importance due to the spread of antibiotic resistance. Our research spans from the fundamental through to translational approaches to develop new control regimes. We use a range of models to investigate host:pathogen interaction.

Our primary goals are to:

• elucidate S. aureus infection dynamics to determine how this organism is able to cause disease.

• investigate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of infection from both the host and pathogen perspective.

• use this information to better inform vaccine development and the use of antibiotics to treat infection.