My research focuses on understanding how changes in bacterial population structure impact on global health and vaccine initiatives. I am especially interested in bacteria that are major causes of diseases like meningitis and pneumonia, the most important of which is Streptococcus pneumoniae.

My research group sequences the genomes of large collections of bacterial isolates (thousands of bacteria) to extract the genetic information relevant to our research questions. We use the genome sequence and population structure data to understand how changes within the bacterial population may impact on human health and the success of vaccination programmes.