My research career has focused on analysing large-scale of bacterial genomes to understand evolution, particularly evolutionary dynamics in response to vaccine implementation and antimicrobial usage. My research is oriented to generate output with clinical impact and high translational potential in improving vaccine design and reducing antimicrobial resistance.

I lead the Global Pneumococcal Sequencing project (www.pneumogen.net/gps/) to survey one of the major children killers – pneumococcus. Partnering with >160 scientists around the world, we analysed >26,000 pneumococcal genomes to understand how pneumococci escape the vaccine, and identified major vaccine-escaping strains. The finding provided evidence basis to guide the next generation vaccine design and vaccine policy in countries where pneumococcal disease burden is high.

Antimicrobial resistance is a global health threat. It is estimated that 4.95 million death are associated with antimicrobial resistance every year. My pioneering work revealed that transmission of antimicrobial resistance between human and food animals is mainly driven by mobile genetic elements in South East Asia. My current research focused on devising innovative strategy to reduce the dissemination of resistance plasmid, so as to mitigate the escalating threat of antimicrobial resistance.