Young Microbiologist of the Year 2023 Competition Finalists

31 July 2023

The Microbiology Society is pleased to announce the finalists of the 2023 Sir Howard Dalton Young Microbiologist of the Year competition.

This prize, which recognises excellence in science communication, is awarded each year to an early career Society member as part of our mission to advance the understanding of microbiology and champion the amazing contributions to microbiology made by our members.

For this year’s competition, the finalists were shortlisted from entrants who presented at Annual Conference 2023. The finalists will present their research to a panel of judges at the Microbiology Society Showcase taking place on 3 October 2023.

The 2023 finalists and the titles of the presentations they were shortlisted for are as follows:

• Dr Anna Dewar University of Oxford, UK who was shortlisted from the 'Genetics and genomics Forum' for the talk titled, Why do bacterial pangenomes vary across species?
• Chelsea Brown, University of Warwick, UK, who was shortlisted from the 'Tuberculosis: The forgotten pandemic' session for the talk titled, Modelling Mycobacterial Membranes: Anyone for PIMS?
• Hannah Brown, University College Dublin, Ireland, who was shortlisted from the 'Virus Workshop: Positive strand RNA' session for the talk titled, Enhanced Hepatitis E virus infection and replication in polarised cell models.
• Safi Rehman, Queen's University Belfast, UK who was shortlisted from the 'Infection Forum' for the talk titled, Klebsiella-human endothelial cells battleground: The T6SS counteracts a novel intrinsic endothelial cell defence mechanism.
• Anastasia Lankina, University College London, UK, who was shortlisted from the 'Virus Workshop: DNA viruses' session for the talk title, The humoral immune repertoire observed in HCMV glycoprotein B vaccine recipients includes a protective response to an antigenic domain conserved across human herpesviruses.
• Kate Morling, University College London, UK who was shortlisted from the 'Integrative virology: a celebration of multidisciplinarity' session for the talk title, Design and Characterisation of Novel HIV Capsid Inhibitors.
• Ed Deshmukh-Reeves, University of Kent, UK, who was shortlisted from the 'Secondary adaptations: the fuel of diversification in parasites and protists' session for the talk titled, C. albicans as a pioneer organism to accelerate polymicrobial biofilm formation on airway management devices.
• Thomas Heaven, University of Lincoln, UK, who was shortlisted for the 'Plant-microbe interactions' session for the talk titled, Characterisation of apple and strawberry powdery mildew effector candidates.