Young Microbiologist of the Year 2020 Competition : Meet the Finalists

07 October 2020

The Microbiology Society is pleased to announce the finalists of the 2020 Sir Howard Dalton Young Microbiologist of the Year competition.

The competition, which is closely fought every year, gives early career members the chance to go head-to-head to be recognised as the best science communicator of the year. For this year’s competition, the finalists were shortlisted by the Society’s Divisions from entrants who were due to deliver an oral or poster presentation at our 2020 Annual Conference and those who delivered an oral presentation at the 2019 Microbes in Medicine meeting.

The finalists will each give a 15-minute presentation on their research to a panel of judges chaired by the Society’s Professional Development Committee Chair in November during our one-week digital event series, Why Microbiologists Matter.

The 2020 Sir Howard Dalton Young Microbiologist of the Year Competition finalists and the title of their final-worthy presentation, are as follows:

• Ekaterina Buzun, Newcastle University, UK - Type 9 secretion of glycoside hydrolase enzymes in a gut Bacteroides enables ‘sharing’ during glycan metabolism
• Amy Jacobs, National Institute for Biological Standards and Control and Imperial College London, UK - Investigating the Effect of Herpes Simplex Virus 1 Latency-Associated Non-Coding RNAs on the Human Neuronal Transcriptome
• Vanessa Las Heras, University College Cork, UK - Short-term consumption of a high-fat diet increases host susceptibility to Listeria monocytogenes infection
• Abraham Lee, Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, UK - Asparagine deprivation causes a reversible restriction of HCMV acute virus replication
• Thomas O'Brien, University of Cambridge, UK - In vitro reconstitution of the polymicrobial community associated with CF airway infections
• Aisling Towell, Trinity College Dublin, UK – How does Staphylococcus aureus colonise Atopic Dermatiris skin?
• Emily Warman, University of Birmingham, UK - Intragenic promoters and divergent transcription in prokaryotes

Find out more about the work of our finalists by viewing their video entries, via our playlist below:

All Microbiology Society members are invited to attend this year’s final at the one-week digital event series, Why Microbiologists Matter in November. Find out more, including the day’s full schedule.