Prevalence and diversity of Shiga-toxin and non-O157 Escherichia coli carriage in cattle

Deborah qualified as a veterinary surgeon in 1994 from the University of Cambridge and after a short period in clinical practice, moved to the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Medicine, Edinburgh. Here she completed a PhD in 2000, investigating immune responses to parasite infection in cattle. She subsequently spent four years at Edinburgh as a postdoctoral scientist, researching the molecular epidemiology of antimicrobial-resistant commensal and pathogenic Escherichia coli on beef cattle farms. From 2005, Deborah took a nine-year career break to raise a family and is now returning to the field of veterinary epidemiology. She will take up her Fellowship at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh in March 2015, and will be investigating the epidemiology of Shiga toxin positive non-O157 E. coli on farms throughout the UK, using genome sequencing technology to examine the relationship between bovine and human clinical isolates.