I completed my DPhil (PhD) at the University of Oxford where I studied antibiotic persistence in bacteria. 

Persisters are antibiotic tolerant cells that can survive antibiotics despite being genetically susceptible. The combination of their rareness within microbial populations and lack of distinct genetic signature makes them exceedingly elusive (and difficult!) to study. To tackle this, I focused my research on high throughput growth curve experiments to establish how changing population dynamics affected persistence. 

I presented this work at conferences including ESEB, the Microbiology Society Annual Conference, and the Ineos Oxford Institute Multidisciplinary Approaches to AMR. 

I am in the process of converting the chapters from my thesis into three separate publications.

My Master's research was part of the UK's Big Tick Project which set out to profile ticks and tick-borne diseases infesting cats and dogs. 

We established the distribution of ticks on companion animals throughout Great Britain before profiling zoonotic pathogens. My focus was on the ticks found on cats and I published these results in Veterinary Parasitology. 

In total, I published 4 papers during my Master's research and thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with the broad academic team.