I am originally from Pakistan and moved to the UK in 2016 to pursue a PhD atCardiff University, supported by a fully funded scholarship. My research focused on understanding the epidemiology, capsular switching events, AMR mechanisms and their associations with mobile elements of Group B Streptococcus (GBS), a normal flora of the human gastrointestinal and genital tract that causes severe diseases in neonates under 3 months old and the elderly over 60years of age.
In the third year of my PhD, I joined the Wellcome Sanger Institute as aSenior Computational Biologist for the JUNO project, a genomic surveillance of GBS from over 40 countries. During my time within the JUNO project, I curated the first comprehensive database of 16,000 ENA-available GBS genomes and meticulously linked it with high-resolution metadata. I also led the analysis of country specific GBS population as well as a global GBS dataset comprising over 20,000 genomes to understand the population diversity, mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance and their association with mobile genetic elements.
In addition to my research, I have served as a mentor to various JUNO partners, assisting them with analysis plans and manuscript writing. I have also worked as a bioinformatics trainer in workshops conducted in person and online in Colombia, Gambia, Turkey, and Pakistan. I have had the honor of being a guest speaker at international conferences, including ISSAD 2023 and ESPID2022.
Recently, I joined the University of Oxford to work on the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Response project. My role focuses on better understanding microbe-immune interactions and their contribution to inflammation and disease, specifically IBD. I am collaborating with Carl's team at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and am excited to expand my knowledge and transfer my skills to the team.
