Grace joined MLW in October 2022 as a CORE pre-master research intern under the Genomic Epidemiology and Antimicrobial Resistance Microbes (GEARM) Group, supervised by Dr. Jennifer Cornick and co-supervised by Professor Kate Baker from the University of Liverpool. She worked on a Shigella surveillance study focusing on Genomic Epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance profile of Shigella isolated from under-five children in Blantyre, Malawi.

She describes MLW as a stimulating environment that pushes her to improve from time to time.

“I’m grateful to my supervisors and senior scientists who are instrumental in my growth. The mentorship I’m getting is invaluable. I applied and was selected for the Wellcome Connecting Science global training courses in a 1-week intensive training in antimicrobial resistance in Bacterial Pathogens (Africa) in wet lab and Bioinformatics and to give a talk at 1st Genomics for Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance and One Health symposium all held at the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, Johannesburg, South Africa. The course and symposium aim to improve skills for effective AMR detection and develop capacity for genomic surveillance. This training equipped me with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand bacterial genomics and metagenomics, fundamental principles, and technologies in genomic research, and how this can be translated for the benefit of human health”.

Asked how she feels, Grace had this to say, “I’m very excited to attend this course and symposium and I am looking forward to learning from experts in the field and collaborating with other like-minded individuals. Ultimately my goal is to become a researcher in genomic epidemiology and AMR and this course will be instrumental in achieving this.”

Keep progressing Grace!!