Charlie Head
PhD Student

Profile

Biography

Charlie is a PhD researcher in both the Environment department and the Biology department, having started in January 2022. She is supervised by Dr. J Brett Sallach and Prof. James Chong and is funded by the Department of Environment and Geography. She currently studies trends and dynamics of antimicrobial resistance in wastewater treatment by-products. She has a keen interest in bioinformatics and data analysis, and has worked as a graduate teaching assistant in various basic R and command line skills workshops. In addition, in 2021 she worked as a part-time intern at Amur Energy, in their anaerobic digestion laboratory. 

Before starting her PhD, she did a Masters by Research in Biology at the University of York (2022), also studying environmental antimicrobial resistance. She also has a first class BSc in Biomedical Science from Sheffield Hallam University (2020), where she worked in a busy hospital microbiology laboratory in 2019, and completed a research project on biocide resistance in biofilms.

Research

Overview

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a developing global health crisis, threatening lives worldwide. The AMR challenge is complex as both exposure to antimicrobials as well as the transfer of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) can result in the proliferation of AMR. The environment is a significant reservoir for AMR and isn’t fully characterised or understood. Part of the work to understand the environmental context of AMR requires looking at wastewater, due to the release and reuse of by-products in the surrounding environment and  in the agricultural industry. 

Having previously studied the presence of antibiotic resistance genes and antibiotic compounds throughout the stages of wastewater treatment for my Masters, I am now focusing on one of the key end products, biosolids, for my PhD. My main areas of interest currently are seasonal variation in determinants of AMR, following NHS prescribing changes, and dynamics throughout the air-drying process. 

I am also interested in looking at how other wastewater treatment plants differ in their treatment process and how this affects resistance genes and antibiotic compounds. I mainly use high-throughput qPCR methods and high-resolution liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, both for suspect screening. In addition, I am using and learning how to use both R and Python to manage my data analysis.