There have been 281 million cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic in Europe alone. Even before this the global burden of disease included respiratory infectious diseases amongst the top ten world-wide sources of mortality.

Diagnosis of respiratory tract infections is challenging despite them being one of the most common reasons for seeking healthcare, and one of the most common reasons for antibiotic prescription. Novel, rapid, point-of-care, precise and easily interpreted diagnostic tools are required to tackle this challenge. Direct sequencing of nucleic acids from patient samples can be rapid, precise and is pathogen agnostic, you don’t need prior knowledge of which pathogen is causing the infection to use it as a diagnostic.

Challenges remain however in standardisation, application and interpretation of the data generated and that’s where this project comes in. You’ll be applying metagenomic bioinformatics techniques to respiratory samples and developing analysis and interpretation approaches that facilitate decisive clinical and public health decision making.

The project will be supervised by Dr Michael Cox (UoB), Dr Meera Chand (UKHSA), Dr David Cleary (UoB), Dr Dhruv Parekh (UoB), Dr Miruna David (UHB).

Applications of a two page CV and covering letter including your experience, suitability and motivation should be sent to hpru-phgenomics@contacts.bham.ac.uk by 9th January 2026.