Past members

Sofia Mitrović

Sofia completed her Bsc in Biomedical Science with First class honours in 2023.

She is now starting to study for her BDS at the University of Sheffield

Alhassan Arafaie

Alhassan completed his PhD at School of Clinical Dentistry in 2023.

Raphael Peter Galleh 

Galleh completed his PhD at School of Clinical Dentistry in 2023.

PhD Research: “Understanding Glycans and Glycosidases in Infection and Biofilm formation as a Route to Novel Antimicrobials” under the supervision of Dr. Graham P. Stafford and Dr. Dan Lambert. My PhD is fully funded by Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) of Nigerian Government.

Ahmed Almuntashiri

Ahmed completed his PhD at School of Clinical Dentistry in 2022.

PhD project is involved in exploring the molecular microbiology of TonB-dependent transport of sialic acid and it’s role in oral bacterial physiology in the context of periodontitis. This is a key virulence trait that we aim to understand with a view to developing glycan based anti-microbials against periodontal pathogens. This project is supervised by Professor Graham Stafford and Dr Joey Shepherd.

Katherine Ansbro

Katherine completed her PhD at School of Clinical Dentistry in 2022- she now works at Oxford University.

Alice Seleiro

Alice completed her PhD at School of Clinical Dentistry in 2022- she now works At Lonza.

Dr Liz Court

Dr Liz completed her

Cher Farrugia

Cher completed her PhD at School of Clinical Dentistry in 2021.

We like to keep track of former lab members whenever possible and details of the lucky escapees are listed below- we miss them all:

Dr Sumita Roy joined the group on 1st October 2007 as a PhD student before gaining a 1 year, Wellcome Trust Value in People Fellowship.  She is now working at the Univesity of Exeter as a Postdoc after stints at a Research Instiute in Bangalore as a postdoctoral researcher in collaboration with the group of Dr Vania Braga at Imperial College, London working on Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Dr Matthew Hicks left the group n 2013 and is now working as a professional grants  support writer.

Avanti Gupta: Has just completed a 6 week summer project with us looking for Bacteriophage in the oral cavity.  She will now return to complete the third year of her BSc studies in Biomedical Sciences.

Ghadeer Al Zayer:  Completed her MSc in molecular medicine project with us on production of flagella chimeras and has now returned to Saudi Arabia to get married and pursue her career there.

Suttipalin Suwannakul:  Completed her PhD in 2010 and has now returned to Thailand to take up a position in a prestigious Dental School.

Rob Ridley:  Is currently completing his PhD after spending a few months with us on the Synthetic biology work

Mary Connolly: Completed her BMedSci in 2010 with merit and has now returned to the BDS course to complete her studies and to become a dentist.  She is now on VT training in Newcastle.

Noraini Wan Sulaiman:  Completed her MSc project in 2009 investigating invasion of Tannerella into epithelial cells.  She has now returned to Malaysia to become a lecturer teaching biochemistry in the medical faculty of the Islamic Science University of Malaysia (http://www.usim.edu.my/usim/).

Sarah Ying has now moved on to take up a PhD position at the University of Hong Kong.

Michael Spencer has now returned to the BDS course to complete his studies.

Corrie Porter was funded on an MDH faculty studentship and working on sialic acid in periodontal pathogens but has now moved on to train as a secondary school teacher in biology

Tom Wight: MBiolSci student, moved on to a PhD at the IFR in Norwich, but is now training as a teacher.

Andrew Frey was funded by a BBSRC Case partnership award with GSK to study the influence of sialidase inhbitors on periodontal bacteria.  Andy was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to take up a postdoc post at the University of South Florida at Tampa to study MRSA.  He now works in Newcastle as a Postdoc.

Kate Naylor was funded by the Medical Faculty and is studying invasive signature genes from the keystone periodontal pathogen P. gingivalis. She has now taken up a position as with CHAIN Biotech

Charlotte Green was  funded by the UoS Synthetic Biology for healthcare PhD network lead by Graham on strain development for the secretion of proteins by E.coli. Charlotte has now taken up a  position at the  SynBio company Colorofix

Emmanuel Amabebe was  funded by the nigerian government and is working on the characterisation of metabolites and microbiota of the female reproductive tract in relation to pre-term delivery of infants. Emmanuel is now working in the lab or Prof Dilly Anumba in the dept of oncology and human metabolism in Sheffield.

Mohammed Al-Zubidi was funded by the Iraqi government and is studying Bacteriophage as potential tools for treatment of oral infections.  Mohammed will be taking up a lectureship back in his home University in Baghdad.

Nitin Kamble was funded by the Indian Government and worked on protein secretion in E.coli, he is now a Postdoc in Cincinatti USA

Marianne Satur was funded by a BBSRC iCASE award with Ludger Ltd and worked on structural biology and engineering of sialidases- she is now working as as data scientist