SEMINAR SERIES

Stephanie is a medical microbiologist in NHS Lanarkshire and Professor of Microbiology at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland. She edited the Journal of Hospital Infection for over 20 years, five of them as editor-in-chief, and now edits for Infection, Disease & Health and International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents. She trained at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London followed by postgraduate studies at Guy's Hospital, where she gained a thesis on the epidemiology and biochemistry of toxin-producing staphylococci. She has worked and travelled all over the world, including the Canadian High Arctic, where she resuscitated 30,000-year-old organisms from glacial ice. She spent six years as Infection Control Officer for Argyll before moving to Health Protection Scotland as their inaugural microbiologist (2002-5). There, she set up MRSA surveillance for Scotland, evaluated real-time PCR for MRSA screening and helped establish the Scottish Microbiology Forum. She has been a member of various working groups on antibiotic prescribing, MRSA and hospital cleaning, and is a current or recent member of NHS Scotland Decontamination; NHS Scotland ASSURE; UK NICE (infection control & antimicrobial prescribing); UK HTA (screening and diagnostics); ESCMID groups on infection control (ESGNI), MRSA & multi-resistant Gram-negative bacilli; and 2023 ECCMID conference committee. She advised DEFRA on surface cleaning and hygiene during the COVID-19 pandemic and collaborated with an international group of virologists, physicists, ventilation engineers and aerosol scientists on airborne spread of SARS-CoV-2. She has published books, book chapters and over 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals on hospital cleaning, antimicrobial management, infection control and MRSA. At present, she balances editorial duties with research and teaching, specifically the environmental control of hospital pathogens.