FEMS Journals ECR Oral Presentation Prize: Emily Gulliver

Congratulations to Emily Gulliver, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Microbiota and Systems Biology Group, Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases (CiiiD), Hudson Institute of Medical Research (Australia) for winning a best ECR Oral Presentation Prize at the Annual National Meeting of the Australian Society for Microbiology (ASM2023). This conference took place at the Perth Convention Centre (Australia) on 3 – 6 July 2023.

This award is sponsored by the FEMS journals and as well as receiving a cash prize, we interviewed MacLean to find out more about her prize winning research:

What has been your route through microbiology thus far?

My route through microbiology began in my undergraduate studies, where I chose it as my major. I then continued by completing an honours year and PhD in molecular microbiology. I am now a postdoctoral researcher at Hudson Institute of Medical Research where I am the Microbiology lead of the Microbiota and Systems Biology Laboratory.”

How was the experience of ASM2023?

ASM2023 was an excellent conference, I thoroughly enjoyed all of the sessions, it was very. difficult to decide which session to go to as there were so many interesting topics covered. My favourite part was being able to network and meet up with microbiologists from across the country, both new faces and old friends.”

Could you provide a brief and simple overview of the topic your oral presentation covers?

My presentation covered a project in which we are looking for novel antimicrobial resistance in the gastrointestinal microbiome through novel culturing coupled with comparative genomics.”

What encouraged you to perform research in this area of microbiology?

As a bacteriologist, our main concern is always antimicrobial resistance, so whilst working in a laboratory that focuses on the human gastrointestinal microbiome, I thought it was important to examine resistance in this context.”

What do you see as the next steps in this area of research?

The next steps for this research are to put our findings into the global context and examine the mobility of these putative novel antimicrobial resistance genes.”

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