Allen group website - Current collaborators

Current collaborators

Chris Brackley here in the School of Physics and Astronomy in Edinburgh collaborates with us on simulating new methods for diagnosing bacterial infections. He also cosupervises our student Patrick Sinclair on simulation of bacterial biofilms and our student Freya Bull on modelling microbial growth.

Tine Curk, now at Northwestern University, Erika Eiser and Daan Frenkel in Cambridge, James Farrell and Jure Dobnikar of the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Science, and Stefano Angioletti-Uberti at Imperial College London are all working together on using soft matter-based methods to detect bacterial infections.

Susana Direito is an impact acceleration associate (IAA) at the Edinburgh Complex Fluids Partnership and an NBIC research fellow. She works on establishing links with industrial partners and specialises in projects involving biofilms and bacterial sterilisation. Susana worked as a postdoc on our ERC project for a while but now conducts her own independent research. She is co-supervisor of Laura Confalonieri's PhD. She is also part of the outreach prorgramme for our UKRI-funded project on the Physics of AMR.

Martin Evans and Rosalind have worked together for a number of years developing theoretical models for various biological problems, ranging from genetic switches to population dynamics models for evolution.

Andrew Free is a microbial ecologist from the School of Biological Sciences at Edinburgh University. We have been working together since 2007 on experimental and theoretical models for microbial ecosystems.

Lynne Howell of the University of Toronto and the Sick Kids hospital in Toronto, and Daniel Wozniak of Ohio State University, are collaborators on Gavin Melaugh's project to understand the physics of bacterial aggregate formation.

Eulyn Pagaling, a microbial ecologist at the James Hutton Institute and former postdoc with me and Andrew Free, is working with us on various microbial ecology projects.

Ofelia Popescu is a PhD student at Edinburgh University, funded by the SOFI² Centre for Doctoral Training. She is supervised by Simon Titmuss and Susana Direito. We are collaborating on bacterial growth in microfluidic droplets.

Matt Scott is an expert on bacterial physiology from the Schools of Applied Mathematics and Biology at the University of Waterloo in Canada. We have recently published a paper together on the way that growth conditions affect the response of bacteria to ribosome-targeting antibiotics. We are currently working on various new ideas that have arisen from that work.

Simon Titmuss is a colleague in the School of Physics and Astronomy here in Edinburgh. We are co-supervising a PhD student, Nia Verdon, who is using microfluidics to grow bacteria in small droplets. Simon also supervises Ofelia Popescu, who collaborates with us.

Hugh Vass is a former technician in the School of Physics and Astronomy in Edinburgh. He collaborates with us on the design of microscope pressure cells and other high pressure devices.

Bartek Waclaw leads the Dioscuri Centre for Physics and Chemistry and Bactera at the IPC PAS in Warsaw, Poland. He is working on evolutionary dynamics in bacterial populations, using both theory and experiments. Bartek is also interested in lots of other topics including modelling the evolution of cancer tumours.

Patrick Warren from Unilever Research and Development is a long-time collaborator. Recently we have worked together on methods for computing parameter sensitivities in stochastic simulations.