€1.8m grant awarded for research into bacterial resistance

Dr Rosalind Allen of the School's Institute of Condensed Matter & Complex Systems has been awarded a 1.8m euro Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC).

The award will support the next five years of Rosalind's work on the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections - a current major global health issue. Together with collaborators including the School's Dr Bartek Waclaw, she will use experiments and computer simulations to understand why some infections, in which the bacteria form dense colonies called biofilms, are especially hard to treat with antibiotics. Rosalind will also investigate whether these spatially structured infections could act as important sources of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

"I am delighted to receive this funding from the ERC. Biological physics has been an expanding area within the School for some years now, and the School's investment in labs and both experimental and computer support has been an important factor in helping me to get this grant. Antibiotic-resistant infections are a growing and widely recognised problem worldwide. As physicists we can bring a new perspective to understanding the factors that control the emergence of these resistant infections and I am delighted to contribute to this effort." Dr Rosalind Allen, Institute of Condensed Matter & Complex Systems