Antibiotic resistance in nursing homes will be the focus of a new research project led by Matthew Flinders Fellow, Professor Geraint Rogers.

The project will investigate how people living in aged care facilities can be best protected from dangerous microbial bacteria that cannot be treated by antibiotics.

Professor Rogers, recently appointed as a Matthew Flinders Research Fellow, is a renowned leader in microbiome research and director of microbiome research at the Infection and Immunity Theme at SAHMRI.

This research work is being done by a team from Flinders in conjunction with SAHMRI, which Professor Rogers says represents an important link between leading research institutions to achieve greater outcomes.

He will give a talk on “Antimicrobial Resistant Pathogens in Residential Aged Care” for the College of Medicine and Public Health at 1pm on Wednesday, in Room 5D-208 on Level 5 of the Flinders Medical Centre.

In the past five years, Associate Professor Rogers’ research has contributed to more than 60 papers and he has been involved in winning more than $10 million in competitive research funding. The research papers have appeared in the Lancet, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, ISME J, JACI, Molecular Psychiatry, Nature Medicine, Gut, and Clinical Infectious Diseases, contributing to more than 2400 citations in five years.

After studying molecular genetics at the University of Edinburgh, he completed a PhD and postdoctoral research in molecular microbiology at King’s College London. He moved to the University of Queensland in 2013 as honorary fellow before a stint as Senior Research Officer in Immunity, Infection and Inflammation at the Mater Medical Research Institute in Brisbane.