Dr Gwen Knight
Associate Professor
United Kingdom
Gwen is an Associate Professor and co-Director of the AMR Centre.
Her background is in mathematics (BA mathematics, Oxford University) and systems biology (MSc, MRes at University College London). Her PhD investigated various aspects, both modelling and experimental, of the hospital associated bacteria methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at UCL, with experimental and epidemiological work based at St George's Healthcare NHS Trust.
She is currently funded by an MRC Career Development Award, having previously held an MRC Skills Development Fellowship, both focused on exploring aspects of antibiotic resistance dynamics. Gwen was also involved in the CMMID COVID-19 response, specifically on hospital spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Previously, she has been involved in organising the RESIST and RESIST2 workshops on AMR modelling for policy.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
Gwen is co-organiser of the "AMR: a multidisciplinary approach" short course.
Gwen teaches on the introduction to mathematical modelling of infectious diseases module and short course at LSHTM.
Research
Gwen's research focuses on the dynamics of antibiotic resistance. Her main focus is her fellowship topic, which aims to explore the interaction between age, gender and the dynamics of antimicrobial resistance. Alongside this, her research falls broadly into three areas: understanding the dynamics of bacteriophage driven resistance evolution in S. aureus, modelling One Health interventions and data exploration within SEFASI (the JPIAMR project she is PI of) and developing better methods to support data-guided empiric antibiotic guidelines.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gwen was involved in work to estimate the burden of hospital-acquired infection and settings of transmission, as well as the interaction of COVID-19 with AMR drivers.
At the HPRU in HCAI and AMR at Imperial College London Gwen worked on projects using locally collected data to design better interventions for control of carbapenem resistant Enterobacteriaceae alongside thinking about the fundamental question of where does AMR originate from?
Gwen has a long standing interest in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, specifically the resistant subpopulation (multidrug resistant, MDR-TB). Gwen has been involved in investigating new methods to control the spread (e.g. antiretroviral therapy, potential new TB vaccines) as well as the impact of shortening therapy.
Selected Publications
