Meet our researchers

Rehab Ahmed

Wellcome Trust Centre for Global Health Research Fellow 
PhD student at the University of Khartoum, Sudan

I was funded by the Wellcome Trust Brighton and Sussex Centre for Global Health Research to join the TB group at BSMS for 6 months. My project investigates how the action of lipid-modifying drugs may change the interaction of TB bacteria with macrophages as an innovative approach to finding new drugs for TB. I have learnt a lot of microbiology, cell biology and molecular methods relevant to infectious diseases in Sudan. I’ve enjoyed working here and experiencing the English Summer weather and life in Brighton. I have some exciting findings that I hope to publish and use in fellowship applications to continue my research and build a research career in Sudan.

Michael Brennan

PhD Student, University of Sussex 

I am working on a PhD project investigating the relationship between host metal ion distribution (particularly zinc) and mycobacterial physiology. My project is a collaboration between the Department of Global Health and Infection at BSMS and Prof Melanie Bailey at the University of Surrey. I hope to be able to combine molecular microbiology approaches with ion beam techniques to define phenotypic changes associated with the abundance of metals.

Tesfaye Gebreyohannis Hailemariam

PhD student at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
TBGEN H3Africa Initiative 

I am working on the comparative transcriptomics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates. The study focuses on understanding the role of novel RNAs in tuberculosis pathogenesis and drug resistance. I hope to discover M.tb responses involved in immunomodulation and to explore unknown mechanisms of drug resistance. The study is funded by Armauer Hansen Research Institute (AHRI) through TBGEN Africa in partnership with BSMS.

Aaron Goff

PhD Student, now Research Fellow
National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs)

My PhD is funded by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) to develop a lung lesion model to help identify new compounds that kill Mycobacterium tuberculosis. I will use the transcriptional responses of M.tuberculosis to define conditions for a new model that can be used for novel drug discovery.

Nancielle Mbiatong Tchatat

Visiting Researcher
University of Buea, Cameroon

I am a PhD student in microbiology from the University of Buea, Cameroon. My research project will determine the transcriptional profile of drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis in human sputum, as a means to detect antimicrobial drug resistance and predict treatment failures. This is a collaborative project between the University of Buea, Cameroon and the Department of Global Health and Infection at the University of Sussex, funded by the Wellcome Trust Brighton and Sussex Centre for Global Health Research. We also work together on a TB Genetics Network in Africa (TBGEN Africa) funded through The Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) consortium. I visited BSMS recently to learn a number of molecular techniques and how to work safely in a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory prior to starting my research.

Rachel Meade

PhD Student, University of Brighton

My PhD project is on non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). These water and soil living mycobacteria cause opportunistic infections in at-risk groups, such as M.abscessus that accelerates end-stage lung disease in people living with cystic fibrosis. My project, in the Department of Global Health and Infection, will investigate the abundance of these mycobacteria in natural water sources and the built environment, developing novel molecular techniques to characterise these bacterial populations.

Jamie Medley

PhD Student 
Public Health England

I joined the TB group in the Department of Global Health and Infection to study for a PhD defining Mycobacterium tuberculosis in lung tissue with the aim of highlighting new vaccine and drug targets. My project is in partnership with Public Health England and it combines our expertise in bacterial gene expression with their extensive understanding of TB pathology. I hope to further characterise the complex host-pathogen interactions involved in pulmonary disease.

Panagiotis Papaioannou

PhD Student
University of Brighton, Doctoral Training Alliance Applied Biosciences for Health Programme 

I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Brighton working with Dr Konstantina Vogiatzaki. The subject of my research is using computational fluid dynamics to understand changes in the human lung due to tuberculosis. This method could be applied to the early diagnosis of tuberculosis or to map responses to treatment.

Laura Steege

PhD Student, UK Health Security Agency

My PhD project is a partnership between the UK Health Security Agency and Department of Global Health and Infection at BSMS. It is focused on mapping the distribution of non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) through hospital systems and characterising adaptations that might impact colonisation.

Kaya Taylor

PhD Student 
SoCoBio BBSRC and UK Health Security Agency

I joined the mycobacterial group in the Department of Global Health and Infection to study for a PhD investigating the formation of mycobacterial biofilms. My project is part of the South Coast Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership (SoCoBio) and is a partnership between BSMS, the University of Southampton and the UK Health Security Agency. My project will focus on the phenotypes of bacteria that grow in clumps or clusters to better characterise targets for antimicrobial drug discovery.

Nicoletta Campolattano (Alumna)

Visiting Researcher 
PhD Studentship, Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Italy

I am interested in the interactions that take place between human macrophages and mycobacteria, aiming to understand how important efflux mechanisms are to Mycobacterium tuberculosis in this dynamic environment. My project extends a partnership between the Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” in Italy and the Department of Global Health and Infection at BSMS.

Daire Cantillon (Alumnus)

Research Fellow
Wellcome Trust ISSF
Microbiology Society ECM Forum Fund
Santander Knowledge Transfer Grant 2016

I joined the TB group in the Department for Global Health and Infection in 2013 to study for a PhD in mycobacterial pathogenesis. My work focuses on understanding how and why Mycobacterium tuberculosis grows in clumps and how this affects anti-microbial drug efficacy. The development of an in vitro model that better mimics the growth characteristics of M.tb in the lung will improve our chances of discovering new effective drugs for TB. I have presented my work at several UK and European Microbiology conferences and through PubhD. I have also been awarded funds from Santander to travel to Brazil to learn how to isolate antibacterial compounds from Brazilian folk medicines and to build research collaborations towards identifying novel anti-microbial compounds for the treatment of tuberculosis. Now that I have been awarded my PhD I hope to continue my research career working towards novel therapies for mycobacterial diseases. 

Alfredo Castañeda-García (Alumnus)

Research Fellow
Ramon Areces Fellowship for Life Sciences

I worked in the Department of Global Health and Infection in collaboration with the Genome and Stability Centre, University of Sussex and Instituto de Biomedicina de Sevilla (IBIS)-CSIC, Spain. My research focuses on DNA repair mechanisms in actinobacteria. We have discovered a missing mismatch repair system that operates in mycobacteria, which when abrogated by gene knockout generates a hypermutator phenotype. This may be important for the accumulation of antimicrobial drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the emergence of MDR-TB and XDR-TB.  I have presented these results at National and International meetings and published the research in Nature Communications. I plan to continue this work as I build an independent research career.

Barbara De Siena (Alumna)

Visiting Researcher 
PhD Studentship, Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Italy

I joined the TB group in the Department of Global Health and Infection to continue my work investigating mechanisms of efflux in Mycobacterium tuberculosis - working to understand if disabling efflux pumps alters the interaction between TB bacteria and human macrophages, and whether this changes the susceptibility of M.tuberculosis to drug treatment. We published part of the study in Frontiers in Microbiology. My project was a collaboration between BSMS and the Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” in Italy.

Elena Hailu (Alumna)

Visiting Researcher
Association of Physicians Links with Developing Countries Scheme

I won funding to work in the TB group at the Department of Global Health and Infection in collaboration with the Armauer Hansen Research Institute (AHRI), Ethiopia. My project investigates the hypothesis that TB pathology might be influenced by Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain diversity. I learnt new skills in macrophage infection models, RNA extraction and ELISAs that enabled me to measure how macrophages and M.tb responded when I infected these immune cells with different M.tb strains. I investigated three different M.tb genetic lineages that are common in Ethiopia. I enjoyed my time in the UK. I learnt new techniques that I can use in Ethiopia to continue this collaboration and to develop my research career at AHRI.

Abdul Jabbar (Alumnus)

Visiting Researcher International Research Support Initiative Programme (IRSIP), Higher Education Commission of Pakistan

I worked with the TB group at BSMS through a scholarship from the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan International Research Support Initiative Programme. My research is focused on the molecular characterisation of tuberculosis (TB), the analysis of resistance mechanisms and the genomic diversity of clinical M.tuberculosis complex isolates in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. There is currently no data available for this region. I hope that my research will answer many questions regarding the molecular epidemiology of TB in this area and identify novel mutations in M.tb clinical isolates that cause antibiotic drug resistance. We published this in Nature Scientific Reports.

Heena Jagatia (Alumna)

PhD Student
University of Sussex

My PhD, in the Department of Life Sciences and the Department of Global Health and Infection at the University of Sussex, was on gene regulation in actinobacteria. My project investigated the protein complexes necessary for RNA polymerase to initiate transcription in Streptomyces coelicolor and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. My research focused on characterising the function of essential accessory binding proteins that influence antimicrobial compound production in Streptomyces, which are also targeted by the first line anti-TB drug, Rifampicin. I have presented posters at several UK and international conferences and spoke about my research at Nerd Night in Brighton. I hope my work will reveal new insights into the initiation of transcription, an essential and druggable pathway in bacteria. I am now doing a postdoc in mycobacterial physiology at The University of Leicester.

Kaj Kreutzfeldt (Alumna)

PhD Student
National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs)

My PhD was funded by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) to investigate human genetic variation that might affect susceptibility to tuberculosis. I identified single nucleotide polymorphisms in genes associated with immune responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. I disrupted the action of these genes in macrophages and assayed the effects of different polymorphisms on gene function, measuring whether these changes altered macrophage responses to M.tb infection. I presented my findings at National and International conferences. I am now doing a postdoc in M.tb-host interactions at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, USA. 

Leticia Muraro Wildner (Alumna)

Research Fellow Wellcome Trust
Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, CAPES Brazil

I won funding from CAPES to join the TB group in the Department of Global Health and Infection to study anti-mycobacterial drug action during my PhD at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil. I am researching the mechanism of action of anti-microbial compounds isolated from Brazilian plants on Mycobacterium tuberculosis. I use M.tb genome sequencing and transcriptional profiling alongside a range of in vitro and macrophage models to map drug efficacy across different M.tb phenotypes and to understand the mode of action of these novel compounds. I have presented my work at European conferences and I won first prize in the University of Brighton poster competition. I am now a Wellcome Trust-funded postdoc investigating patient responses to TB drug therapy.

Filomena Perrone (Alumna)

Visiting Researcher
Federation of European Microbiological Societies Research Grant
PhD Studentship, Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Italy

I am interested in gene regulation in mycobacteria, and I joined the TB group at the Department of Global Health and Infection to expand my expertise working with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. My project, characterising the function of a TetR-transcriptional regulator in M.smegmatis and M.tb, is a collaboration between BSMS, Royal Veterinary College and Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”. I have developed fluorescent reporter constructs and used RNA profiling to map the expression pattern and regulon of a transcriptional regulator that is hypothesised to be important for mycobacteria to survive inside macrophages – a key step in the pathogenesis of M.tb. I will continue this work to expand our understanding of host-M.tb interactions, and to hopefully find new strategies to treat tuberculosis. I have shown posters of my work at European and UK microbiology conferences and published my work in Frontiers in Microbiology.

Adam Roberts (Alumnus)

PhD Student Public Health England

I am a PhD student in the Department of Global Health and Infection, working on drug efflux in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. My project, in collaboration with Public Health England, aims to understand how drug efflux impacts on drug action in TB. Strategies to prevent drug efflux may increase the efficacy of current TB drug therapies.