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 Tanuka Sen is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, where her research focuses on understanding bacterial pathogenesis and developing innovative strategies to combat antimicrobial resistance.
Dr. Sen completed her PhD in Biochemistry and Biomedical Science at the Australian National University before undertaking postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford, where she developed single-cell microscopy approaches to visualise the dynamics of bacterial virulence plasmids in real time. She has contributed to research on bacterial toxin-antitoxin systems, plasmid biology, antimicrobial resistance, and genome analysis.
Her research integrates microbiology, molecular biology, bacterial genetics, advanced fluorescence microscopy, bioinformatics, and antimicrobial drug discovery to investigate bacterial virulence, plasmid biology, host-pathogen interactions, and the mechanisms of action of novel antimicrobial compounds. She is particularly interested in translating fundamental discoveries into new approaches to combat antibiotic-resistant pathogens.
Research expertise includes:
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
Antimicrobial drug discovery and mode of action
Bacterial pathogenesis and virulence
Infection biology
Fluorescence and confocal microscopy
Single-cell and live-cell imaging
Functional genomics and bioinformatics
Plasmid biology and horizontal gene transfer
Bacterial genetics and molecular microbiology
She welcomes opportunities for interdisciplinary research, student supervision, industry engagement, and collaborations that advance antimicrobial innovation and improve global health.
