My background is in applied microbiology. I completed my PhD with the Biosafety, air and water microbiology group at Public Health England (Porton Down, UK) in collaboration with the University of Southampton, investigating engineering and human behavioural factors influencing the colonisation of hospital taps with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Before joining LSHTM, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher for the Quadram Institute Bioscience (Norwich, UK) specialising in Listeria monocytogenes persistence in the food production industry and also working on the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in stool.