Research Interests:
- Antibiotic resistance dissemination, aim to identify reservoirs of drug resistance in the environment
- Defining environmental reservoirs of pathogenic bacteria in soil and water
- Biodegradation of recalcitrant compounds and biopolymers in the environment
- Microbial community analysis and specific expertise in the development of environmental proteomics for extraction and analysis of enzymes from soils and wastes, and in the processing of biopolymers
- Metagenomics and analyses of microbial gene pools in soil; discovery of novel antibiotic gene clusters
My role in the project ResPharm:
I will be responsible for the identification and quantification of pharmaceuticals, including antimicrobials, from environmental samples collected in this project. We will initially use non-targeted metabolite profiling approach with high resolution Q-TOF mass spectrometer LC-MSMS to identify what is present in these samples, this will be followed by quantitative analysis in MRM mode with triple quad mass spectrometer LC-MSMS.
My research interests lie in developing and analysing mathematical models of pathogen transmission. This includes using statistical methods to estimate the parameters associated with spread, and using stochastic and deterministic models to generate forwards projections. As well as using models for making projections during specfic outbreaks, I am interested in using models to understand outbreak dynamics generally so that more effective public health measures can be planned. I look forward to using these techniques to help understand the dynamics of AMR in the environment, and the potential impacts on local host populations, as part of the UK-India RESPHARM Team.
In the ResPharm project I am involved in the chemical and molecular analysis of environmental samples collected across two sites in India: Baddi, pharmaceutical manufacturing hub (main area of interest for environmental pollution) and Kangra, residential area (control area).
I contribute to the selection of the sampling sites and I provide standard operating procedures for our teams in UK and India for samples processing and metadata collection.
In particular, I work on the identification and quantification of active pharmaceutical ingredients, and I study the antimicrobial profile of the environmental microbiomes through qPCR and metagenomes. To complement the work done in India and help developing methods, I run microcosms experiments with UK samples mimicking the riverine environment.
I am a part of the project co-ordination team for the AMR-INDIA funding call, with the remit of amalgamating methods used for investigating antimicrobial resistance in the environment. Within ResPHARM, I therefore have an interest in understanding and collating the variety of methods used across the research partners. I have a particular interest in the mapping of AMR across space and time.
