Uzma Khan
Dr. Uzma Basit Khan is a bioinformatics expert with extensive experience in microbial genomics and metagenomics. From February 2020 to June 2024, Dr. Khan worked at the Sanger Institute as a Senior Computational Biologist in the JUNO project, focusing on the evolution, epidemiology, and antimicrobial resistance of Group B Streptococcus (GBS) strains. During this time, they developed the first comprehensive GBS database and led the analysis of approximately 27,000 global GBS genomes, contributing significantly to the understanding of GBS disease and vaccine development. With a strong passion for teaching and knowledge sharing, Dr. Khan served as a bioinformatics trainer and conducted workshops across Colombia, Turkey, and Pakistan. Additionally, they supervised several research projects and assisted JUNO partners with workflow analysis and manuscript preparation. Their contributions to the field have led to invitations as a plenary speaker at international conferences on GBS and pediatric infections. Dr. Khan holds a PhD in Medicine from Cardiff University, completed in 2020. Their doctoral research involved the genomic and phenotypic profiling of antimicrobial resistance in GBS infections, with a focus on capsular switching, phylogenetic relationships, and the identification of lineage-specific genes as potential vaccine candidates. Currently, Dr. Khan is part of the NDORM team at the University of Oxford as a Postdoctorate, where they lead the analysis of metagenomes from IBD patients as part of the IBD Response project. Their work aims to uncover associations between microbiome measures and response to advanced treatments for IBD. In this role, they are also establishing cutting-edge pipelines for metagenome assembly and annotation.