News
December 2024: Celebrations all round!
Many congratulations to Eve Emes and Jake Wildfire for passing their PhD vivas! both passed with minor corrections and will soon be official Drs! I am also very excited to announce that I have been promoted to Professor. Many thanks to all those who have helped me on this awesome journey.
October/November 2024: Travelling
As part of the SEFASI consortium, I visited Michel Dione in Senegal - brilliant to meet someone in person after 4yrs of work together! I also travelled to Bali to meet with our Indonesian and South African collaborators in our start up meeting of the WellModTB grant.
August 2024: Wellcome Grant on TB awarded
I will be leading a Work Package on drug resistant (DR-)TB as part of a wider Wellcome funded project with Rein Houben led by Richard White at LSHTM. For this I’ll be hiring a research assistant or fellow soon - please get in touch if you are interested in developing mathematical and statistical tools to better understand DR-TB working in an international consortium.
March 2024: Our first age + sex paper is out!
Our work quantifying the age and sex patterns in bloodstream infections in Europe is now out in PLoS Med.
October 2023: Our team wins a Vivli AMR Data Challenge prize
Excited to announce that our team, led by Jake Wildfire, won the runner up innovation prize for this data challenge! Well done and thanks for a fun project to Jake and the rest of the team (Alastair Clements, Naomi Fuller and Naomi Waterlow)! Check out our github here for the final report and supporting code. And now the video of our interview on YouTube!
September 2023: Chaelin Kim starts her PhD
Wellcome to Chaelin Kim! Chaelin has started her MRCLID PhD, with first supervisor Finn McQuaid. She’ll be looking at the new regimens for MDR-TB (BPAL(M)) and how their efficacy and usage might vary by resistance to fluoroquinolones.
January 2023: Naomi Waterlow starts on my fellowship
Excited to start working with long-time CMMIDer Naomi Waterlow on my MRC CDA fellowship! Naomi will be working firstly on the ECDC data analysis and then looking to expand other angles of my fellowship.
September 2022: Max starts
Welcome to Max Wallat! Max has just started his MRCLID PhD, supervised by Jodi Lindsay, myself and Kat Holt. We’re looking forward to bringing a more bioinformatics angle to our research on transduction based transfer of AMR within clinical isolates.
September 2022 MRC CDA starts
Excited to start data gathering and analysis on my new project. Advert open until 30th September for data scientist to join the KnightGroup. Ideally looking for a statistician to complement the modelling proposed with experience in electronic health records.
July 2022: Alastair upgrading
Congratulations to Alastair for passing his upgrading - officially a PhD student once we’ve got some aims written more precisely as objectives!
July 2022: Quentin’s viva
Quentin passed his viva with minor corrections! Well Done Quentin! If you want to see a summary of his work you can check out some talks on YouTube.
May 2022: MRC CDA!
Unbeliveably excited to announce that after a stressful few months I have been awarded an MRC CDA fellowship to explore the relationship between AMR and age. This will start in September - I’ll be recruiting an Research Fellow so please get in touch if you are an statistician / data scientist interested in AMR.
January 2022: Tresco and SEFASI
Very happy that we have been able to continue working with Tresco on our new SEFASI grant. Watch this space for our website!
December 2021: Co-Director of AMR Centre
Gwen is now Co-Director of the AMR Centre at LSHTM with Prof. Kat Holt.
November 2021: EPIDEMICS8
Quentin gave a very nice presentation at EPIDEMICS. If you are interested in his work - you can see a talk of his here on youtube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sde2Z_gKvLo]. He and Gwen also have a poster about bacterial diversity, and Gwen has a poster on hospital transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
November 2021: SEFASI
Very excited to announce that Nichola and Gwen have been awarded a JPIAMR grant: SEFASI will use quantitative methods to rank farm level interventions across AMR in collaboration with Dagim Belay in the University of Copenhagen, Michel Dione at ILRI and partners at the RVC. We will have a post to advertise in the new year for a mathematical modeller / economist - watch this space!
September 2021: Welcome to Alastair
Alastair Clements has joined the Knight Group as an MRCLID student to work with Gwen and Jodi Lindsay, further developing our models of gene transfer within S. aureus. Croeso!
February 2021: Welcome to Tresco and good luck to Nichola!
Tresco Emes has taken over Nichola’s project on One Health evaluations of interventions to prevent antimicrobial resistance. Nichola is heading to a new exciting post at PHE with Julie Robotham. She is keeping an honorary contract at LSHTM so we hope to still see her often.
January 2021: New year, new lockdown, FortKnight still going strong
We started the year with a review of progress… what has happened since we met in September?!
November 2020: Welcome to Yalda!
Yalda Jafari has started work on the NIHR Nosocomial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 grant. She will be working alongside Gwen, with Ben Cooper (Oxford), Jon Read (Lancaster) and Julie Robotham and her team at PHE. First thing to do: understand the heterogeneity between English Trusts in terms of their level of nosocomial transmission. Great to have her skills on board!
September 2020: Welcome to Jake!
Jake Wildfire has started his MRCLID PhD with Jodi Lindsay and Gwen. His project will explore the mechanisms behind generalised transduction to explore the rate of transfer of antibiotic resistance genes. Super to get some more lab data and further questions for the models.
September 2020: Knight group meet
In a physically distanced way, Quentin, Nichola, Naomi and Gwen met in person, for the first time in over 6 months. Over a glass or two in a windy pub garden we discussed our plans for the next 3months/1yr/5yrs and how we’ve coped with the COVID-19 pandemic. Great to see faces in 3D!
July 2020: An “official welcome” to Naomi
Naomi Fuller has decided to take up a PhD position with me and Tim McHugh to look at all things resistance in Mtb. She’ll focus on what happens at sub-MIC concentrations and bystander selection at first and then we’ll see where we go! Great to have her on the team.
February 2020: Gwen and Quentin present at UK Parliament
Quentin and Gwen presented the Wellcome Data ReUse prize work, with Francesc Coll, at a Superbug POST event at Portcullis House. For more information (and some nice pictures of Quentin) see here:
https://twitter.com/i/events/1232714747763724288
February 2020: Gwen back to work
Gwen is now back at work - lots to catch up on but amazing how much has stayed the same…
May 2019: Gwen on maternity leave
Lovely baby Nora was born on 30th April. Gwen is now on maternity leave until February 2020 with occasional email contact.
April 2019: Quentin upgraded to PhD candidate
Quentin passed his upgrading viva, with examiners Peter Mullany and Katherine Atkins.
April 2019: Gwen leads winning team of Wellcome Data Re-Use Prize
Gwen, Nichola and Quentin were all involved in the LSHTM AR.IA team that won the Wellcome Data Re-Use Prize on AMR. We developed a syndrome-level composite index to guide empiric therapy decisions using a new large open access Pfizer database on bacterial resistance provided by Wellcome for this prize. For more information check out our report and the Shiny app we developed, or see the writeup in the LSHTM AMR Centre newsletter.
October 2018: Quentin starts his PhD
Quentin Leclerc has started his MRC LID PhD with Gwen and Jodi Lindsay to explore the dynamics of horizontal gene transfer in Staphylococcus aureus. From a background of microbiology, he has trained in mathematical modelling at Imperial College London and will be using a combination of wet and computational methods to explore the importance of bacteriophage and transduction to AMR spread.
August 2018: Nichola Naylor joins LSHTM
Nichola Naylor has joined LSHTM to work on a One Health collaboration between LSHTM and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) called ‘Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH)’, funded by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. An economist by training, Nichola will be applying her quantitative skills to explore how we can assess the economic impact of cross-disciplinary interventions to control AMR.