Dr Tegan Harris

“Are non-typeable Haemophilus influenza strains carried in the nose, different to those infecting the lungs?”

Tegan is a molecular microbiologist, completing her PhD through the Queensland University of Technology while based at the Menzies School of Health Research. Her research focuses on the application of genetics and genomics as research tools for better understanding bacterial infectious diseases, primarily those which affect humans.

Her CRE fellowship aims to investigate the respiratory pathogens non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae, aiming to determine if isolates from the lungs of children with respiratory disease are genetically distinct from isolates in the nasopharynx of the same children, using genomic and bioinformatic analyses.