📢 Funded #PhD studentship (UK Home students) for a multidisciplinary project on the disinfection of wastewater using novel technologies. Collaboration with environmental engineering firm Hazen & Sawyer, covering microbiology, virology, chemistry. Apply here: tinyurl.com/28he6ztp @dmu.ac.uk

Our April LIPHI Postdoc & PGR Club was an 'Ask a Pro!' session, where our panel of academics and researchers answered questions all about navigating research and careers. Thanks to the co-chairs and panel members for their insights! 👨‍🔬👩‍🔬 @dmu.ac.uk

Very excited to have contributed to this project and see the story out in the real world! Amazing work on what makes resting T cells permissive to HIV-1 by cell-cell spread, led by @d-mesner.bsky.social and @mattvxwhelan.bsky.social in @jollylab.bsky.social. Read the paper here: tinyurl.com/HIVNup

We're so excited to be at the @isaricar.bsky.social Antiviral Conference in Prague this week! Drop by our posters 206 and 212 to talk to us about our work on natural product-derived and host-targeting antivirals! #ICAR2026 @dmu.ac.uk

Lovely visit to Belfast last week for the @microbiologysociety.org Annual Conference. Well done to Gemma Cooper who debuted our recent work on pan-coronavirus antivirals. And fantastic to see such strong representation by the @dmu.ac.uk researchers and PhD students! #Microbio26

Our outreach activity Escape Lab went travelling to a Leicester primary school this week, and we had a blast with the Year 5s trying to find our antiviral drug. Some lovely feedback from the school, thanks to the team for supporting the students and making the session such a success! @dmu.ac.uk

Our February @dmu.ac.uk LIPHI PGR & Postdoc Club was all about careers post-PhD. Thanks to Dr Samuel Watkin and Dr Stewart Sale for sharing their experiences and career journeys, and offering some great advice - to find the thing you really enjoy doing, and that that best careers are rarely linear!

Check out this report by Jessica Harris about her @amiposts.bsky.social Summer Studentship in our lab: www.the-microbiologist.com/careers/summ... Jess worked with postdoc Gemma Cooper to investigate the synergistic activities of natural product compounds against coronaviruses.

It was an absolute pleasure to host Dr Leah Goulding at our @dmu.ac.uk LIPHI seminar series last week. Thanks for an engaging talk about antivirals against influenza viruses, made very accessible to our diverse multidisciplinary audience!

Applications are now open for a paid Virology Research Assistant Frontrunner Internship to support on-going research in our lab! 🧑‍🔬 @dmu.ac.uk undergraduates in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences can apply! 📅 Deadline is 2 March 2026 🔗 Apply on MyGateway: my-gateway.dmu.ac.uk/user/app/job...

Our January LIPHI PGR & Postdoc Club featured a workshop on presenting to different audiences. We tackled the challenging task of distilling our research into just three sentences, and also how to present to a 5-year old! Well done to everyone for making it such an engaging session! @dmu.ac.uk

Our December LIPHI PGR & Postdoc Club seminar saw two chalk talks by PhD students Yao Li, talking about co-crystallisation, and Valentine Okonkwo, on design of experiment. And of course, featured some festive mince pies! Join us for the next meeting in January! @dmu.ac.uk

Delighted to have been awarded the New Research Supervisor of the Year at the @dmu.ac.uk Doctoral College Showcase. Building my research programme and supervising students is one of the most rewarding parts of my role, and I'm so grateful to have an enthusiastic and supportive team to work with!

Our LIPHI PGR & Postdoc Club seminars have restarted, with postdoc Gemma giving a useful Insider Guide to Postgraduate Research. Thanks Gemma & Brandon for organising the PGR Club for the last few years, welcome our new PhD chairs Harini & Katie! @dmu.ac.uk

Earlier this year we took our Escape Lab outreach activity on the road, funded by @microbiologysociety.org & @biochemsoc.bsky.social Outreach Grants. We had a blast teaching kids about viruses & the drug discovery process. Check out how Microbiology Society's Adam & Clare got on with Escape Lab!

Like Escape rooms? 🧐 What about Escape LABS! 🥳 Microbiology Society staff, Adam and Clare, travelled to De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, to take on an interactive lab-themed activity. @shivkumarlab.bsky.social Watch the video here: microb.io/4mbADZa

Such a pleasure to host Dr Petra Mlcochova at our Leicester Institute of Pharmaceutical Health Innovations PGR and Postdoc Club last week. Petra gave a brilliant talk on her career and move from academia to industry. Great advice for our students exploring a future in biotech!

Huge congratulations to the newly-minted Dr Gemma Cooper for completing her PhD viva yesterday! It has been a pleasure to supervise Gemma and see her grow from strength to strength! Thanks to our collaborators Tim Snape, Parvez Haris, Nigel Temperton, examiners Efstathios Giotis, Ray Allan. #proudPI

We had our first Health and Life Sciences Early Career Researcher #ECR Showcase today, starting with an inspiring keynote by Dr Rachel Bolton-King, who gave us a tour of her career to date, and leaving us with some great advice on embracing opportunities.

Well done Gemma Cooper and Abdelrhman Moustafa for presenting their PhD research at the Applied Microbiology International ECS conference yesterday! We enjoyed the diversity in microbiology projects, and the super encouraging panel discussion on careers.

Our department is looking to hire an Associate/Full Professor in the field of Virology. Please share and apply if you are intersted. Also happy to answer any questions recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09552

We're in Liverpool this week for the @microbiologysociety.org Annual Conference. Excited to present our work and meet people, do come and say hi if you're there! 👩‍🔬 👨‍🔬 #Microbio25

Well done to our #Virology Lab Assistant Frontrunner Interns - Jess Harris and Grace Lee - who had their last day in the lab last week! Thanks to DMU Internships for supporting and funding this scheme.

It's #BritishScienceWeek2025 and we are having a busy week taking our Escape Lab: A Journey into Drug Discovery #outreach activity to various venues. Thanks to the @biochemsoc.bsky.social and @microbiologysociety.org for scientific outreach grants for these activities!

We have a #PhD scholarship (fully funded for UK Home students) available for an April 2025 start. Deadline for applications is 8th Jan - one week to go! Find out more here: shivkumarlab.co.uk/positions. Get in touch if you're interested!

Embracing the New Year, New Me sentiment by (finally) joining Bluesky. We are a virology lab at the Leicester School of Pharmacy, De Montfort University, UK. Interested in antiviral drug development and infection control strategies.