Speaker:  Dr Tim Dallman, Lead for Gastrointestinal Bioinformatics, Public Health England will present seminar entitled: Routine genomic surveillance of salmonellosis in England

Host: Rob Kingsley

Abstract
Since 1^st of April 2014 all isolates from English human cases of Salmonella received by Public Health England have been whole genome sequenced (N=30,000).  This has not only transformed our ability to identify outbreaks of infection but also enabled us to intimately describe and survey the population landscape underpinning these discrete events. In this talk I will describe how WGS has enabled us to track protracted food-borne outbreaks of Salmonella across Europe, unpick strain replacement events that have occurred after interventions and provide context to public health threats in low and middle income countries.

Biography
Dr Tim Dallman trained as a bioinformatician at University College London employing machine learning techniques to improve remote homology detection for the assignment of proteins into structural and functional families.

Since joining Public Health England in 2007 he led the development on several large-scale hybrid molecular typing and epidemiological databases before taking a post as the lead bioinformatician within the Gastrointestinal Bacteria Reference Unit (GBRU) in 2010. Within GBRU he has built a team of scientists that manages the Genomics Services with the goal to implement whole genome sequencing methodologies into reference microbiology.  He has successfully overseen the validation and implementation of a WGS solution for Salmonella, Escherichia coli, Shigella and Campylobacter for typing, surveillance and antimicrobial resistance prediction.

He has been involved in several next generation sequencing research projects with the focus on leveraging these technologies for public health molecular epidemiology and the translation of genomic data to molecular diagnostics and typing. He has led the bioinformatics analysis of several key enteric pathogen isolates for incident investigation at a national and European level. He currently manages the sequencing component of a £2m FSA grant on VTEC O157:H7 “supershedding” and has published more than 50 peer-reviewed publications with over 3000 citations.

All staff from organisations on the Research Park are welcome to attend.