I am currently a PhD Student funded by the Centre for Enzyme Innovation and working within the Sequencing and Bioinformatics Group at the University of Portsmouth under Dr Samuel Robson, Professor Joy Watts and Professor Adrian Hopgood (2020-current). My PhD research titled "Exploring the Genomics of Plastic-degrading Bacteria" involves utilising evolutionary microbiological techniques in vitro to investigate global changes in the genomics of bacteria capable of breaking-down plastic polymers using nanopore sequencing.

In the past, my research experience has focused on molecular, microbiological, and evolutionary studies of pathogens gained from my bachelor’s in Veterinary Bioscience at the University of Surrey (2015-2019) and research placement within a Veterinary Epidemiological group at University Complutense of Madrid (2017-2018). During my Master of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge (2019-2020) I worked as part of an Evolutionary Genomics group studying reasons for repeated evolutionary transitions to pathogenicity seen within bacteria, using Streptococcus suis as a model and focussing on the estimation of mutation rates using mutation accumulation assays.

My PhD project builds upon these specialisms directed towards environmental microbiology, specifically investigating the genomics of bacteria capable of plastic degradation, with particular focus on the use of next-generation sequencing techniques. My project specifically involves using evolutionary microbiological techniques to investigate the evolution of bacteria capable of degrading plastic polymers in vitro through the investigation of genomic changes seen at specific timepoints using nanopore sequencing.

My areas of interest in research are:

• Evolutionary Microbiology
• Bioinformatics
• Bacterial Genomics
• Sequencing