I am an interdisciplinary researcher working at the interface of biophysics, microbiology, and microengineering, with a central focus on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and how microbial interactions shape antibiotic efficacy.

My research training is rooted in biophysics, developed during my work at the University of Sheffield, where I studied microbial interactions through the lens of the bacterial cell wall, the primary target of many clinically important antibiotics. Rather than examining bacteria in isolation, my work focused on how interactions between neighbouring microbes influence cell wall structure, accessibility, and response to antibiotics. Using quantitative imaging and physical analysis, I investigated how spatial organisation, proximity, and intercellular interactions alter the effective action of cell wall–targeting antibiotics, revealing that antibiotic susceptibility is strongly context-dependent.

This work reframed AMR as a collective and biophysical phenomenon, where microbial communities can modulate drug penetration, mechanical stress, and envelope remodelling in ways that promote tolerance and survival without requiring classical genetic resistance mechanisms.

This interaction-focused, biophysical perspective now underpins my current research, where I develop human-tailored microfluidic organ-on-chip platforms to study microbial behaviour in physiologically relevant environments. By recreating realistic spatial structure, flow, and host interfaces, my work enables direct investigation of how microbe–microbe and host–microbe interactions influence antibiotic performance, persistence, and pathogenicity in gynaecological and other mucosal systems.

Across my research, a consistent theme is the use of biophysical principles to understand microbial dynamics across length scales, from nanoscale cell envelope interactions to community-scale organisation bridging fundamental physics with translational microbiology and therapeutic development.