Jessica Blair, PhD
Institute of Microbiology and Infection
University of Birmingham
United Kingdom
 

Dr Jessica Blair is an Associate Professor in Antimicrobial Resistance in the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham. Dr Blair’s area of expertise is the molecular mechanisms of Antibiotic Resistance. In particular her team are interested in the study of efflux pumps as a mechanism of resistance including understanding how efflux works to limit intracellular accumulation of antibiotics, how efflux pumps are regulated and how the pumps assemble.

Associate Editors

 

Kate Baker, PhD
University of Liverpool
Liverpool, United Kingdom

 

Kate trained as a veterinarian before completing her PhD in disease dynamics at the University of Cambridge and postdoctoral training in microbial bioinformatics at the Sanger Institute. She leads a research group at the University of Liverpool focused on the genomic epidemiology of Gram negative pathogens and antimicrobial resistance.

Christophe BELOIN, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology
Institut Pasteur
Paris, France


Christophe Beloin obtained his PhD in microbiology in 1998. After a 3-year post-doctoral fellowship at Trinity College Dublin, he joined the Institut Pasteur in 2001, first as a post-doctoral researcher and then, in 2003, as an Institut Pasteur Research Fellow in the Biofilm Genetics Unit headed by Jean-Marc Ghigo. In 2014, he was promoted to research director and director of the Institut Pasteur microbiology course. Within the Biofilm Genetics Unit, his group specialises in the extreme recalcitrance of bacterial biofilms to antibiotics, notably explained by tolerance and persistence mechanisms. He is studying also how tolerance can be a stepping stone for emergence of antibiotic resistance.

Graeme Conn, PhD
Emory University School of Medicine
Atlanta, GA, USA
 

Dr. Conn’s research uses a multi-disciplinary toolkit to define molecular mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, with specific current focus on ribosome modifications and efflux systems. He is also interested in identification of new targets and development of novel strategies to counter antimicrobial resistance.

Leah Cowen, PhD
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON, Canada
 

Dr. Cowen is Vice-President, Research and Innovation, and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Toronto, Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics, co-Director of the CIFAR Fungal Kingdom: Threats & Opportunities program, and co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Bright Angel Therapeutics, a company focused on development of novel antifungals. She has received a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award, Grand Challenges Canada Star in Global Health Award, E.W.R. Steacie Award, and Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics & Infectious Disease. She is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her laboratory takes an interdisciplinary approach to understand how fungi cause human disease and evolve resistance to antifungal drugs, leveraging fundamental biological insights to advance development of new strategies to treat life-threatening fungal, infectious disease.

Georgina Cox, PhD
University of Guelph
Guelph, ON, Canada



Dr. Cox’s research program explores complex aspects of bacterial physiology in combination with cutting-edge drug discovery endeavors to ultimately combat pathogenic bacteria. Specifically, Dr. Cox and her group are exploring novel approaches to control bacterial infections by investigating and inhibiting bacterial adhesion to the host. Her lab also studies drug efflux pumps, to gain insight into the substrate specificities, physiological functions, and origins of these transporters, which will inform future drug discovery efforts and antibiotic stewardship.

Elizabeth Cummins, PhD
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK



Dr Elizabeth Cummins is a Postdoctoral Researcher within the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Resistance and Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. Elizabeth’s research is focused on understanding the evolutionary pathway to multidrug resistance in bacterial pathogens. Specifically, she uses genomic approaches to investigate how the genome accommodates and potentiates genetic change to allow the acquisition and maintenance of resistance genes.

Karl Hassan, PhD
University of Newcastle
Newcastle, NSW, Australia



Dr Karl Hassan is an Associate Professor in bacteriology and antimicrobial resistance. Dr Hassan’s research investigates antimicrobial modes of action, microbe-microbe interactions, resistance gene evolution, and bacterial antimicrobial resistance mechanisms with a focus on intrinsic resistance related to cell envelope permeability and multidrug efflux.

Alasdair T. M. Hubbard, PhD
Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham, United Kingdom

Dr Alasdair Hubbard is an Assistant Professor in AMR and One Health within the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science at the University of Nottingham. Alasdair’s research is focused on antimicrobial resistance, primarily in Enterobacteriaceae. Specifically, he investigates the evolution of antimicrobial resistance in physiologically relevant contexts and to further understand cryptic mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance.

Uli Klümper, PhD
TU Dresden
Dresden, Saxony, Germany



Dr. Klümper’s main research focus is on understanding the proliferation of antimicrobial resistance in the environment with a specific focus on the underlying ecological and evolutionary processes involved. He is specifically interested in the spread and selection dynamics of antibiotic resistance genes and plasmids in complex bacterial communities and the environmental drivers that cause changes in their abundance in the environments.

Despoina Mavridou, PhD
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas, USA

 

Dr. Mavridou is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Molecular Biosciences at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research program focuses on mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in critical Gram-negative pathogens. More specifically, the Mavridou lab investigates the biogenesis and evolution of antibiotic resistance enzymes that are located in the Gram-negative cell envelope, such as beta-lactamases and mobile colistin resistance (MCR) proteins. Dr Mavridou's team uses an interdisciplinary approach; they combine classical biochemistry and microbiology techniques with bioinformatics, proteomics, experimental evolution and fluorescence microscopy, and  validate their findings from model laboratory systems in clinically relevant experimental settings (clinical isolates and infection models).

Jean Mbisa, PhD
UK Health Security Agency
London, UK



I lead a WHO Specialized HIV Drug Resistance Reference Laboratory which offers genotypic resistance testing for HIV and HCV, and genotypic and phenotypic resistance testing for HSV-1 and HSV-2 in the clinical pathway and for public health surveillance. My research interests include understanding the mechanisms and evolution of antiviral resistance, molecular epidemiology of virus infections, virus-host interactions and the development of novel whole genome sequencing methods. I am also interested in developing virus sequence databases and genotypic antiviral resistance interpretation tools.

 

Ronan McCarthy, PhD
Brunel University London
London, United Kingdom
 

Ronan is a Professor in Biomedical Sciences in the College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences at Brunel University London. His research group focuses on profiling the key signalling pathways that govern bacterial virulence, biofilm formation and antibiotic resistance. It also focuses on developing novel approaches to disrupt these pathways to attenuate virulence and overcome intrinsic and acquired antibiotic resistance mechanisms.

Danesh Moradigaravand, PhD
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Thuwal, Saudi Arabia



I am a computational biologist with an interest in developing and applying novel data analytics approaches in microbial genetics, particularly in the context of antimicrobial resistance. My research aims to understand how pathogenic bacterial strains spread within and across clinical and non-clinical settings, encompassing the One Health framework, and to identify the genetic determinants driving their evolution. I employ a wide range of analytical techniques, including genomic epidemiology, chemical genomics, machine learning, and data mining to study the evolution of antimicrobial resistance on epidemiological time scales.

 

Advisory Editors

César Sánchez
Nature Communications
London, United Kingdom



César began his editorial career in 2008, after ten years dedicated to research on bacterial biochemistry and genetics of antibiotic-producing Streptomycetes. He worked as an associate editor at Trends in Microbiology, Nature Reviews Microbiology and the News & Views section of Nature, before joining Nature Communications in October 2013. Having handled manuscripts on diverse microbiological topics, he is currently focused on bacterial, archaeal and fungal biology, including microbial cell biology, microbiomes, pathogenesis, antimicrobial therapies, and environmental microbiology. César is based in the London office.

François Mayer
Nature Microbiology
Heidelberg, Germany


François studied Microbiology at the Technical University Braunschweig in Germany, and investigated biofilms of the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa during his Diploma thesis in the laboratory of Dieter Jahn. He then earned his PhD in Microbiology studying novel infection-associated genes in the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans in the laboratory of Bernhard Hube at the Hans-Knoell-Institute in Jena, Germany. Following a short postdoc in Bernhard Hube’s lab, he then moved to Vancouver, Canada, to perform postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Jim Kronstad at the Michael Smith Laboratories, University of British Columbia. There, his research focus was on virulence factor production by the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans, antifungal drug discovery, and fungal-bacterial interactions. François joined the Nature Microbiology team in September 2019 and is based in the Heidelberg office. 
 

Social Media Editor

 

Elizabeth Cummins, PhD
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK



Dr Elizabeth Cummins is a Postdoctoral Researcher within the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Resistance and Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. Elizabeth’s research is focused on understanding the evolutionary pathway to multidrug resistance in bacterial pathogens. Specifically, she uses genomic approaches to investigate how the genome accommodates and potentiates genetic change to allow the acquisition and maintenance of resistance genes.
 

Editorial Board Members
 

Rasha Abdelsalam Elshenawy, PhD, UniversityNanjing, Jiangsu, China 
Phillip Aldridge, PhD, Bioscience Institute, Newcastle 
Michelle Buckner, PhD, University of Birmingham,  UK
William Calero-Cáceres, PhD, University Tecnica de Ambato, Ecuador
Sidharth Chopra, PhD, CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute, India
Song Lin Chua, PhD, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Punyawee Dulyayangkul, PhD, Chublahorn Research Institute, Thailand
Sameer Elsayed, MD, MSc, MPH, The University of Western, Ontario (Western University), Canada
Juliana Ene, PhD, Institut Pasteur, France
Rajamohan Govindan, PhD, CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology, India
Maria Hadjifrangiskou, PhD, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, USA
Marwa Hassan, PhD, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Surrey, UK
Jeannine Hess, PhD, the Francis Crick Institute, King's College London, UK
Olumuyiwa Igbalajobi, PhD University of British Columbia, Canada
Deus Ishengoma, PhD, National Institute for Medical Research, Tanzania
Anupama Khare, PhD, National Cancer Institute NIH, USA
Xian-Zhi Li, MD, PhD, Health Canada, Canada
Florent Morio, PharmD, PhD, Nantes Université, CHU Nantes,Nantes, France
James Mason, DPhil, King's College London, UK
Dishon Muloi, BVetMed, PhD, International Livestock Research Institute, Kenya
James O'Gara, PhD, University of Galway, Ireland
David Ogbolu, PhD, Osun State University, Nigeria
Aviram Rasouly, PhD, Research Scientist, NYU Langone, USA
Carlos Reding, PhD, School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, UK
Johanna Rhodes, PhD, Radboudumc, The Netherlands
Enea Sancho-Vaello, PhD, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Shamsaldeen Saeed, PhD, University of Nyala, Sudan
Fraser Scott, PhD, University of Strathclyde, UK
Rebecca Shapiro, PhD, University of Guelph, Canada
Lynn Silver, PhD, LL Silver Consulting, LLC, USA
Mathew Stracy, PhD, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, UK
Yawei Sun, PhD, Henan Institute of Science and Technology, China
Emma Sweeney, PhD, The University of Queensland, Australia
Marc Torrent, PhD, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Enzo Tramontano, University of Cagliari, Italy
Sumiti Vinayak, PhD, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA
Dhammika Leshan Wannigama, MD, PhD, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University and King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, Thailand
Jason Yang, PhD, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, USA
Aldert Zomer, PhD, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
 

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