I am a Research Associate in the Plant Science Group where I work on bacteriocins targetting the bacterial pathogen which causes Blackleg Disease in potato. Bacteriocins are antimicrobial proteins produced by bacterial species against closely related strains, and I am working on a project exploiting these bacteriocins as a preventative treatment. 

I completed my PhD in 2005, where I worked on the upstream activators of the Cell Wall Integrity pathway, one of several MAP Kinase pathways in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. After my PhD I moved into the Biotech industry and NHS where I stayed for several years before returning to investigate the signalling mechanism of UVR8, a UVB photoreceptor in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana at Glasgow in 2010. I stepped back from research in 2014 for family reasons, taking up a Lecturer postion in Further Education until 2020, when I was awarded a Medical Research Scotland Daphne Jackson Fellowship to allow me to return to research. During my Fellowship I developed a novel imaging method which allowed the time-lapse imaging of global biofilm formation of the clinically relevant dual species microbial community composed of the dimorphic fungus Candida albicans and the gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. My work revealed that cell morphology influences community deposition on surfaces, and identified a new role for C. albicans in the development of biofilm macrostructures. In addition, I also developed an optically tractable indwelling medical device mimic for imaging biofilm formation on PDMS, a medical grade silicone elastomer commonly used in devices such as central venous catheters, and readily colonised by microorganisms in vivo.

In 2021 I was awarded a place on the NASA Space Technology, Applications and Research (STAR) online program, which delivered training in the design of Space Biology experiments, the spaceflight environment and provided opportunity to meet with other researchers interested in the field of Space Biology. Since 2021 I have been an active member of the Space Biology community around the NASA Open Science Data Repository, and I am a member of the Ames Life Science Data Archive (ALSDA) analysis working group (AWG), the Microbes analysis working group, and I am Co-Lead on the Microbes AWG Biofilms subgroup. I am also the Co-ordinator for the UK Space Life and Biomedical Sciences Association (UK Space LABS).

My research experience provides me with a background spanning cell signalling, photobiology, microbiology, microscopy and materials science. 

• Microbial communities in health and disease (both plants and animals)
• Development of novel drugs and treatments for microbial disease
• Signalling systems and metabolic interactions of microbial communities
• Space Life Sciences, and their terrestrial applications in healthcare and climate change mitigation

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