Methods and techniques

Skills

Techniques I have used, with where I used them.

Microbiology

3 skills

Isolation and cultivation of environmental bacteria
More than 35 marine sediment isolates (MSc).
Antimicrobial activity and susceptibility testing
Agar diffusion against Candida albicans and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (MSc).
Fermentation and bioprocess optimisation
Bacterial cellulose from food waste with Komagataeibacter xylinus (Cavendish Living Lab); stirred-tank bioreactors, bench to pilot scale.

5 skills

PCR
PCR for NRPS-associated sequences (MSc project).
qPCR, electrophoresis, cloning, Western blotting and CRISPR-Cas9
Training through Gene Editors of the Future (practical, 2023) and Gene Editors of the Future 2.0 (online, 2022–23), University of Westminster.
Enzyme assays
Colorimetric chitinase assay (MSc).
Mammalian cell culture and viability
VERO cells, MTT assay of culture supernatants (MSc).
Recombinant protein expression and purification
Working exposure.

1 skills

HPLC and LC-MS/MS
Clinical biochemistry at St George's, including assays for steroids, aldosterone and renin, and HVA.

4 skills

Genome mining and annotation
antiSMASH, BLAST, CARD / RGI, MobileElementFinder, clinker.
Protein structure and design
AlphaFold, PyRosetta; LifeLab and OpenPETase protein engineering (2025).
Statistics and programming
R (biodiversity analysis at MSSRF; NLP in Health Using R, Edinburgh 2025), Python, SPSS.
Data reporting and lab software
Power BI, Tableau, Excel, Benchling.

6 skills

High-throughput clinical analysers
QC, calibration and maintenance on Cobas 8000, Sebia CAPILLARYS, Beckman DxI, DxA and DxH, and Tosoh.
Quality systems
UKAS ISO 15189 and MHRA standards, SOP compliance, audit preparation, staff training.
Laboratory and clinical information systems
WinPath, Horizon, iClip, Apex, EMIS.
Clinical research support
NIHR study sample processing; clinical-trial assays with Analytical Services International.
Clinical trial management
Clinical Trial Management Crash Course, Primary Care Clinical Trials Unit, University of Oxford (October 2025).
Point-of-care testing
Capillary blood glucose, urinalysis, urine hCG.