Come and join us at @shigellameeting.bsky.social in Paris 2026. Registrations are now open! www.shigella2026.conferences-pasteur.org/home and follow the Shigella starter pack go.bsky.app/6Vbwhjc (message to be added)! 215 days to go!

Delighted to share that I’ve been awarded a Future Leaders Fellowship to investigate the impact of microbial interactions on antimicrobial resistance evolution 🎉 🧫 really grateful for this investment in my lab and excited to start my fellowship in Jan’26! www.ukri.org/news/ukri-an...

I have an MRC-funded PhD project available (www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...) on how warming will change the problem of AMR. Join a small and friendly group (padpadpadpad.netlify.app/about) in (sometimes) sunny Cornwall. 🧪🦠 #microsky Please share the ad below with anyone who may be interested.

Open postdoc position in in my lab in Berlin @mpiib-berlin.mpg.de. Join us to push the frontier in ancient microbial genomics. Please apply until Oct 17th. Reach out in case you have any questions. www.mpiib-berlin.mpg.de/2193291/job_...

Born Monday 21st July 🎉 🍾 Adjusting to new parent life… fuelled by adrenaline, caffeine, and percy pigs!

So excited to share a new paper from my lab just published in Nature Communications! We showed that vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) occupied distinct intestinal niches in the antibiotic-treated intestine. doi.org/10.1038/s414... Amazing work by first author Olivia King and colleagues!

Nothing is more humbling than attempting to exercise* at 39 weeks pregnant during a heatwave. (* ok by attempting to exercise I actually mean using the stairs)

FHEA awarded 🥳 always happy to get a certificate!

Our paper demonstrating that within-species warfare interactions are ecologically important on human skin is now published in Nature Micro! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am delighted that our manuscript 'Staphylococcus haemolyticus is a reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes in the preterm infant gut' is now published. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Big thank you to all co-authors, particularly @lisalamberte.bsky.social and @halllab.bsky.social

I'm very pleased to share the latest paper from my post doc with @kayla-king.bsky.social. We looked at how host microbiota can influence pathogen virulence evolution in a C. elegans model of infection: academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...

Delighted for the labs first PhD students Jack Knowles and Lauren Pittaccio who have been offered their first conference talks at the upcoming Micro Soc Early Career Summer Conference 🤩 great that this friendly + peer-led EC conference platform exists for microbiologists 🙌 #ECConf25

Fantastic seminar today by @valvanom.bsky.social as part of our new QUB AMR Hub seminar series - all about sneaky Enterobacter hiding inside macrophages 🕵️‍♀️ & the AIVRT vaccine research alliance 💉. Great to see a full seminar room!

Metabolic ecology of microbiomes: Nutrient competition, host benefits, and community engineering Review by Erik Bakkeren, Vit Piskovsky, and Kevin R. Foster www.cell.com/cell-host-mi...

Register now! Two days left to register for the Early Career Forum Summer Conference. Join fellow early career members at Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon-Tyne for two days of professional development opportunities.

Defence Systems are so hot right now 🔥 🔥 🔥 so check out our latest preprint to see how DSes contribute to niche adaptation, interact with each other, and drive accessory genome interactions in Pseudomonas aeruginosa 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Gorgeous sunny weekend in Donegal ☀️🇮🇪! Can’t get over this beach

Hopped over to Northern Ireland last week to give a talk at @qubelfastofficial.bsky.social for their AMR seminar series. Thanks very much to @rwheatley8.bsky.social, @lindaoyama.bsky.social, and @sharonhuws.bsky.social for hosting me!

Does anyone have any suggestions for companies / services for long read metagenomic sequencing? #microsky

New opinion paper from the lab! www.cell.com/trends/micro...

Fantastic first QUB AMR Hub seminar! Thank you @mulkern.bsky.social for your excellent talk 👏

New Research Assistant position available in my lab to work on a project testing the efficacy of pills dependent #phage against clinical isolates of enteric bacteria . Part of a growing phage research theme in my lab my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Do people in the same household share strains when they have the same species? How many cells transmit when a strain is shared? Can strain composition be dynamic when species composition is stable? We answer these and related questions for the facial skin microbiome in our latest paper. 🧵[1/10]

Leiden is very lovely! Great time at “new challenges in microbial eco-evolutionary medicine” 🦠

TWO postdoc positions in Computational Microbiology and/or biochemistry. Join our interdisciplinary group in the new Life and Mind Building @OxfordBiology, @UniofOxford, @IneosOxford Please apply and share this post: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMP641/p...

A happy Friday seeing this out! I lucked out and got to work with a couple of really great students on this, Shalini and Jacob, and I’m super proud to see their hard work rewarded #microsky www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

@friendlymicrobe.bsky.social and I invite you to the @bsacandjac.bsky.social antibiotic resistance and mechanisms conference Nov 27-28 in Birmingham! We have great talks on global AMR healthcare, mechanisms, vaccines/immunotherapy, antimicrobial interactions and outreach. bsac.org.uk/antibiotic-r...

Job alert ‼️ 2x professorships available @uniofmanchester.bsky.social - ecology www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai... - organismal biology (inc genomics, evolution etc.) www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMI506/s...

Our final PhD position is now live - come help us see if AI approaches can aid our understanding of cellular signalling systems during infection and cancer. Maybe this could help develop new clinical interventions? www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

So long #EESDrugresistance 👋 what a fantastic few days of resistance / tolerance mechanisms! Big thanks to the organisers for putting on this meeting 🙌

Day one of #EESDrugresistance ✅ 🦠 super interesting to hear more about work on drug resistance in cancer cells (🤯). First time at EMBL Heidelberg and okkkk it’s very nice 😍

🚨 The Whelan lab is currently recruiting for a 6-week summer undergraduate student as part of the Lister Institute's Summer Studentship scheme. 🚨 The student will work along side a Postdoc to study interactions between pathogens from the cystic fibrosis microbiome. More info & to apply please see:

Does anyone know when abstract submissions for MicroSoc Early Career Summer conference close? Can’t seem to find it on the event page 🦠 @microbiologysociety.org @kasiamparfitt.bsky.social

I'm excited to share our latest research on Enterobacter's infection biology in the Journal of Infectious Diseases (tinyurl.com/bcxmn8nc), showing that antimicrobial-resistant Enterobacter species can persist in human macrophages without replication, causing minimal cytotoxicity.

New review out in @NatureRevMicro on the complex rltnshp btween metabolism & AMR! A true labor of love from previous postbac Mehrose, grad students Varun & Zirui, and collaborator @drrobsmith.bsky.social (plus figures I'll likely use for many talks to come 😊) rdcu.be/eaES2

Flying visit back to Oxford… luckily coinciding with a brilliant talk by Michelle Pfeffer on the history of forecasting epidemics (very cool stuff 🤩). Go Michelle!

I'm delighted to announce that the 2025 @microbiologysociety.org meeting on "Understanding and predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics" will be held in Liverpool 26-27 November 2025! Abstract submission will open soon... #microsky 🧪🧫🦠 microbiologysociety.org/event/societ...

Wowie - almost 11 months now in the new job at Queen’s. Time has flown by. Thinking of some highlights of the last almost-a-year:

A few days left to apply for this Postdoc working with microbes and flies! 🧫 🪰 🦠

Two new positions for group leaders working on #AMR at the Ineos Oxford Institute. my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Chromosomal capture of beneficial genes drives plasmids towards ecological redundancy Cool new @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social by @craigmaclean.bsky.social, C. Lood & @rwheatley8.bsky.social doi.org/10.1101/2025...

New pre-print!!! What types of genes end up on plasmids and why? The take home message of this paper is that beneficial genes move from plasmids to chromosome, causing the ecological value of plasmids to decay over time. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Join us for ISBA2025 on Actinomycetes at the lovely beach of Egmond aan Zee (NL), from June 15–19, 2025. Topics include development, drug discovery, ecology and pathogenicity. universiteitleiden.nl/isba2025. Registration and abstract submission here: shop.paylogic.com/574b03bd08ee... #ISBA2025.

Very excited that my 1st first-author paper has just been published!! We present a novel mutant screening technique that can rapidly identify 100s of antibiotic resistance mutations, while evaluating how likely they are in different genetic backgrounds. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Two deadlines coming up in the next few weeks!

Writing lecture slides on 'evolution of AMR' - what are your favourite experimental evolution papers? Bonus points if not E. coli. #microsky

A little bit of snow in Belfast! ❄️ photo from my relatively slippy walk into work…

We have a fully funded PhD studentship to work on engineering bacteria to degrade food associated plastic waste #microsky Deadline: Feb 3rd www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Abstract deadline 12th Jan 🔔

Sharing three fully funded PhD opportunities to join my lab at Queen’s to work on topics spanning bacterial pathogens, antibiotic resistance, microbial interactions, & mobile genetic elements 🦠. Closing dates in January and February, and open to international candidates 🌍 Projects detailed below ⬇️