Stephan Brouwer

Stephan Brouwer (ORCiD: 0000-0002-9777-2992) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland. With expertise in bacterial pathogenesis, encompassing both Gram-negative and Gram-positive human pathogens, his research explores the interaction between infectious disease agents and the human host. Much of his work focuses on understanding and preventing disease caused by the human pathogen Group A Streptococcus (GAS; Streptococcus pyogenes). He is at the forefront of the global effort to characterise a scarlet fever outbreak which began in North Asia in 2011, and his current research themes centre around the emergence of new hypervirulent GAS lineages that pose a major public health threat. Stephan utilises modern molecular technologies to study host-pathogen interactions and identify the genetic requirements for GAS to cause disease, with the aim to pursue the development of life-saving therapeutic and preventative advances. He has published his findings in Top Tier journals and helped to establish a sentinel hospital surveillance system in Australia to monitor the importation of GAS isolates causing epidemic scarlet fever.

Stephan completed his PhD in 2015 at one of Germany’s most respected research institutes, Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), where he conducted research on post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms in the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. He then moved to Australia to join the group of Prof. Mark Walker at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, where he is working eversince.