I am a first-year PhD student at Manchester Fungal Infection Group.

My project, which is funded by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement & Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs), is focused on developing an in vitro model to investigate Aspergillus fumigatus infections in people with cystic fibrosis.

Within this project, I will be utilising CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis to generate an isogenic cell line, which will be used to investigate the mechanisms of A. fumigatus persistence in CF patients.

I will also be carrying out competitive fitness profiling of A. fumigatus using the model and a barcoded knockout library, which has been previously generated within the group.

I completed my undergraduate degree in Microbiology at Queen’s University of Belfast, before moving to Spain where I achieved my master’s in Multidisciplinary Research in Experimental Sciences from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, together with the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology.

As part of this, I completed an eight-month internship at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia in the Bacterial Infections: Antimicrobial Therapies group, which focused on developing an in vitro model to investigate chronic lung infections.

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