Dr Felix Dube

Broader research interests here include the evolution and epidemiology of infectious diseases. The current focus is on Streptococcus pneumoniae (the ‘pneumococcus’), a bacterium that is a major bacterial cause of diseases including pneumonia and meningitis worldwide. By applying high-throughput genome sequencing techniques, this work will provide further insights into the pneumococcal pathobiome, especially changes in pneumococcal sero-epidemiology, pathogenesis and the application of phylogenetic, statistical and computational approaches to unravel genotype-phenotype associations. This work is interfaced with an in-depth characterization of the nasopharyngeal resistome in children colonized by pneumococci.  This work has important relevance to: i) Development of more broadly protective vaccines; ii)  Understanding how antimicrobial resistance determinants evolve and spread; iii) Long-term effectiveness of the existing pneumococcal conjugate vaccines design of future vaccines and iv) Understand microbial interactions in diverse ecological niches predispose to disease.