Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Availability:
Available for supervision
Dr Melinda Ashcroft is a Research Fellow on Infectious Disease Epidemiology (Climate Change) in the Faculty of Medicine at The University of Queensland (UQ). Her current research focus is on Nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) and how NTM infections are associated with climate change and major weather events. Previously Melinda has worked at Monash University as a Research Fellow on the Sero-epidemiology of Klebsiella spp., at the University of Melbourne as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Genomic Epidemiology of Neisseria gonorrhoeae and as a Research Associate at UQ on the genomics and epigenomics of extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli. Melinda was awarded a Bachelor of Applied Science (Biotechnology/Biochemistry) in 2004 from Queensland University of Technology and a Master of Biotechnology in 2013 from UQ. She then switched fields to Microbial Genomics and was awarded a PhD from UQ in 2019 for her thesis: Evolution and function of mobile genetic elements and DNA methyltransferases in extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli.
Dr. Bialasiewicz worked at the Royal Children's Hospital and the Children's Health Queensland HHS for over 18 years conducting translational research and clinical support centering on infectious disease (primarily viral and bacterial) molecular diagnostics, general microbiology and molecular epidemiology. In 2019, he became a group leader at The University of Queensland's Australian Centre for Ecogenomics, expanding on a growing interest in the microbial ecology of the human body, it's role in health and disease, and ways to manipulated to achieve desirable outcomes. One Health microbial ecology, where human health is interconnected with the health of animals (both livestock and wildlife), and the broader environment is also an area of active interest. His background in virology has influenced the work he does, meaning a key focus of his microbial ecology works centres around the interactions between all types of microorgansims (bacteria, archaea, viruses, fungi, and micro-eukaryotes).
Ongoing work includes:
- Leveraging of emerging technologies to explore the hidden microbial diversity and their interactions in the human body.
- Using the technology to develop microbial (e.g. phage)-based treatments or preventatives to complex diseases (e.g. Otitis Media, Chronic Rhinosinusitis, GvHD).
- Understanding the genetics of antibiotic resistance spread.
