Congratulations to Megan Earls who graduated with her Ph.D. on Friday the 8th November 2019. Megan’s Ph.D. project involved the application of state of the art whole-genome sequencing to provide enhanced tracking of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and methicillin-susceptible S. aureus in Irish hospitals. Megan worked under the supervision of Professor David Coleman and Dr. Anna Shore from the Dublin Dental University Hospital Microbiology Unit. Megan’s Ph.D. research has been published in three papers in respected international peer-review journals:
Earls et al. A novel multidrug-resistant PVL-negative CC1-MRSA-IV clone emerging in Ireland and Germany likely originated in South-Eastern Europe. Infect Genet Evol. 2019; 69:117-126.
Earls et al. Intra-hospital, inter-hospital and intercontinental spread of ST78 MRSA from two neonatal intensive care unit outbreaks established using whole-genome sequencing. Front Microbiol. 2018;9:1485.
Earls et al. The recent emergence in hospitals of multidrug-resistant community-associated sequence type 1 and spa type t127 methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus investigated by whole-genome sequencing: implications for screening. PLoS One. 2017;12(4):e0175542