Mathematical Sciences postdoctorate awarded training fellowship

Dr Sara Jabbari  a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Mathematical Sciences, has been awarded a prestigious "Special Training Fellowship in Biomedical Informatics" by the Medical Research Council (MRC), enabling her to undertake experimental work with the School of Molecular Medical Sciences alongside her theoretical mathematical modelling work.

The fellowship focuses on the bacterium Clostridium difficile, which causes thousands of deaths every year in the United Kingdom through healthcare-associated infections. The impact upon the healthcare system is enormous and set to worsen due to the increasing prevalence of hyper-virulent and antibiotic-resistant strains; an urgent need to develop novel therapies to tackle this therefore exists.

The fellowship is designed to provide microbiology training for crucial experimental work to be undertaken and, in tandem with computational models of these networks, a radical enhancement in our understanding of C. difficile infection will be achieved. Crucially, the models will capture conventional and novel therapies (the latter targeting toxin production directly), enabling hypotheses to be generated upon the relative effectiveness of these therapies and estimates made upon required dosages.

Thus this interdisciplinary approach has the potential to improve health and longevity in the United Kingdom and worldwide, reducing the impact of C. difficile infection by accelerating the advancements of novel therapies.