Today, our good friend and collaborator Koji Yahara (National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan) came to visit on his May 2017 UK tour. Good times catching up!
From left to right, Harry Thorpe, Ben Pascoe, Guillaume Méric, Evangelos Mourkas, Diego Flores Cuadrado, Koji Yahara, Sam Sheppard.
We are glad to welcome Diana Espadinha (ITQB NOVA, Oeiras, Portugal) and Diego Flórez Cuadrado (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain) to our lab for a research stay with us as part of their PhD studies. Diana will stay 3 weeks, working on Staphylococcus genomics while Diego, for his second stay with us, will spend 3 months working on Campylobacter genomics and antimicrobial resistance. #goodtimes!
Top picture: Diana and Diego, on St. Patrik’s day at the Parade (Uni. of Bath); bottom picture, at the Raven of Bath, from left to right: Ben Pascoe, Evangelos Mourkas, Jean van Elsen, Diego Florez Cuadrado, Diana Espadinha, Jess Calland, Sam Sheppard, Guillaume Méric.
MRC CLIMB fellow, Daniel Falush hosted a well-attended meeting on development of pipelines for bacterial evolutionary genomics at the University of Bath. With attendees from all over the UK, Europe and even Asia (via Skype) the latest techniques for analysis of populations of bacterial genomes were discussed.
Ben Pascoe from the Sheppard Lab has returned from a successful workshop in the Gambia organised with collaborators from MRC CLIMB. The two-day workshop introduced attendees to CLIMB and working with their own VM participants assembled a test set of bacterial genomes, which they analysed to asses quality, type, call MLST sequence types, identify antimicrobial resistance genes and define core and accessory genomes. The visit was enjoyable and with the inauguration of President Adama Barrow tomorrow (18th Feb) these are very exciting times in the Gambia and hopefully the beginning of a fruitful collaboration.
It was a pleasure for us to host Håkan Johansson, as a visiting PhD student working with us on Campylobacter genomics as part of a FORMAS grant with Linnéuniversitetet (Sweden). On the picture below you can see Håkan officially receiving his Visiting Scholar Rubber Duck Award from Sam. Who even got some Rubus chamaemorus jam in return!
A few weeks ago, Sam Sheppard and Guillaume Méric have travelled to Brazil (São Paulo, and Santa Catarina states) to meet with friends and collaborators from the 1st Workshop on “Next Generation Sequencing to improve Livestock Welfare and Food Security” that we had helped organise in October 2015 in São Paulo. Very promising outcomes, stay tuned!
Top right, and just below: Sam and Guillaume giving talks at EMBRAPA, Concordia (SC, Brazil); top left: with Dr Dani Chiebao in SP; bottom: meeting at EMBRAPA with Dr Monica Ledur, Dr Clarissa Vaz, Dr Adriana Ibelli and colleagues.
Last week, Sam Sheppard and Ben Pascoe have visited Chiang Mai University (Thailand) and Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) for collaborative meetings with South Asian partners and colleagues, as part of a Newton Fund/British Council mobility award.
Good times! We are delighted to have been hosting many visiting researchers and collaborators in the last few weeks. There were no less than 7 of them in the picture below (names with links in legend):
From left to right; front row: Maria Carvalho (UHW/Cardiff University, UK), Phacharaporn Boonkhot (Chiang Mai University, Thailand), Tal Shpigel (Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Tel Aviv, Israel), Heather Chick, Nattinee Kittiwan (Chiang Mai University, Thailand), Amandine Thépault (ANSES, Ploufragran, France). Middle row: Sam Sheppard, Susan Murray, Elvire Berthenet, Lisa Williams, Rhys Jones, Llinos Harris. Back row: Diego Flórez Cuadrado (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain), Philippe Lehours (INSERM U853, University of Bordeaux, France); Guillaume Méric, Ben Pascoe, Dan John.
This week we had the visit of Patrik Ellström, a collaborator from Uppsala University, Sweden working on Campylobacter. This was the opportunity for the lab to collectively appreciate thai food, with careful advice from Eng and Gift, our thai visiting PhD students.
From left to right: (back row): Guillaume Meric, Nattinee (Gift) Kittiwan, Justine Challis, Phacharaporn (Eng) Boonkhot, Ben Pascoe, Evie Toleman, Lisa Williams, Llinos Harris, Daniel Falush, Sam Sheppard. (front row): Leonardos Mageiros, Patrik Ellstrom, Elvire Berthenet, Gethin Allen, Rhys Jones, Susan Murray, Dan John.
Today, we are welcoming to our lab two visiting researchers from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Chiang Mai University in Thailand to work on agricultural pathogens and genomics in Swansea. Dr. Nattinee (Gift) Kittiwan and Dr. Phacharaporn (Eng) Boonkhot will be with us for a few months. Welcome!
The Sheppard Lab 
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