Blogs

3rd April 2026

Becoming a researcher and science communicator; Inspiring inclusion and curiosity as a social media content creator

“Initially, I started making videos online during the pandemic in my second year of my bachelor’s degree. I was studying Biomedicine at the University of East Anglia and was trapped inside during the pandemic. Creating content online for me was a way to be...

27th March 2026

The nutrition and health benefits of cabbage

Cabbage is a humble vegetable which has been eaten for thousands of years. This year, the leafy green has been growing in popularity with the fashion magazine Vogue declaring 2026 “The Year of the Cabbage”. Here at the Quadram Institute, we study the nutrition...

27th February 2026

Is E. coli always bad for you? Meet the microbe with good and bad strains

The bad side of E. coli: urinary tract infections Escherichia coli, better known as E. coli, is a tube-shaped microbe that sometimes causes infection. E. coli is notoriously at the root of urinary tract infections (UTI) when it travels to the urinary tract. This...

13th February 2026

Meet the Microbe Zookeepers from the Quadram Institute

This year at Norwich Science Festival there will be a “Microbe Zoo”. In the Microbe Zoo visitors will be transported into a world usually invisible to the naked eye, one inhabited by bacteria, fungi, viruses and algae. The activity has been developed by the...

6th February 2026

Science beyond the lab: a Science Communication Internship at the Royal Institution

“As I entered the third year of my PhD, I was feeling comfortable in the academic and laboratory research environments and had made good progress with my project; investigating previously uncharacterised genes and their involvement in the regulation of biofilm formation, a process where...

30th January 2026

Making kimchi and connections across Norwich Research Park

Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish of salted and fermented vegetables including cabbage. Kimchi is a probiotic as it contains beneficial live gut microbes, such as Lactic Acid Bacteria. Kimjang is the Korean cultural tradition where communities gather in late autumn and early winter...

23rd January 2026

Inspiring school children to be scientists through “I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here!”

“I’m a Scientist is a unique way to communicate your science and engage with young people from across the UK. It is a chat room style format, where school students can ask questions to scientists about specific topics they are learning about in school,...

19th January 2026

The importance of food composition data; learnings from a roundtable event

In this blog, Dr Maria Traka from the Food and Nutrition NBRI at the Quadram Institute and Professor Michelle Morris from the University of Leeds discuss the need to change the way we work to raise the quality of food composition data and realise...

19th December 2025

The top five blogs of 2025

This year we’ve published 44 blogs covering our research, impact and careers of our scientists, staff and students. Our researchers have shared the exciting research they’ve been doing as well as what they’ve been up to outside of the lab working with the community...

12th December 2025

How Quadram Institute has been working with policymakers in 2025

At the Quadram Institute we work with policymakers and members of parliament to provide strong scientific evidence on food, gut microbiome and health. Working with policymakers is key to delivering our mission of delivering healthier lives through innovation in gut health, microbiology and food....