Role
Conor is an Associate Professor in Microbial Bioinformatics, specialising in the molecular epidemiology of bacterial pathogens and the evolution of microbiomes. They are a member of the Royal Society of Biology and a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority.
Career overview
Conor has over 10 years experience in microbial bioinformatics, genomics and evolution. He holds a B.Sc. in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from Maynooth University and a Ph.D. in HIV drug resistance and transmission from NUI Galway.
Prior to joining NTU, they were a postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada (2011-2014) and a research fellow at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium (2014-2019; still holds an honorary professor position) and an assistant professor of molecular microbiology at the University of Bradford (2019-2021).
Research areas
Conor's research focusses primarily on 4 areas:
- The evolution and molecular epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other members of the genus Mycobacterium
- The use of genomic information for clinical decision making for the treatment of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other pathogens
- The community-level evolution and interaction of microbes within host-associated microbiomes such as the lung and the gut
- The interface between bacterial taxonomy and clinical pathogen nomenclature
External activity
Conor is an editor for the journals Microbial Genomics and FEMS Microbiology Letters
Press expertise
Pathogen transmission and epidemiology