Dr Leah Roberts

Biography

Dr Leah Roberts is a lecturer and group leader in the Centre for Immunology and Infection Control (CIIC) . She is a microbial bioinformatician broadly interested in the application of genome sequencing to investigate clinically important bacterial pathogens, including comparative genomics, evolution, antimicrobial resistance, mobile genetic elements, and transmission analysis. She also has an interest in the rapid translation of research to clinical settings, and has worked closely with hospital and infection control staff in both Australia and internationally.

Dr Roberts completed her PhD at the University of Queensland in 2019 looking at the application of whole genome sequencing to investigate bacterial outbreaks in hospitals. She was then awarded a Biomedical Postdoctoral Fellowship from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), where she worked broadly on microbial phylogenomics, pangenomes, and bioinformatics software development.

Dr Roberts has a broad range of teaching, mentoring and engagement experience within the school and wider scientific community. She is committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive research and teaching environment for her colleagues and students.