Jeremy completed his PhD in microbiology at The University of Queensland in 2011 as part of the Advanced Water Management Center. He then moved to San Diego, USA to complete a postdoctoral position working under the tutelage of Prof. Forest Rohwer at San Diego State University. While there he studied the interactions of bacteriophage with mucosal surfaces that provided a non-host-derived immunity.

Jeremy moved to Monash in 2016 to establish his independent laboratory in Bacteriophage Biology. In 2020, Jeremy joined the Monash Centre to Impact AMR, established to reverse the evolution of AMR using non-drug solutions. Jeremy is a member of the community empowerment initiative, to help raise awareness of AMR.

Our lab studies bacteriophage – viruses that infect bacteria – and specifically investigates the tri-partite symbioses formed between bacteriophage, their bacterial hosts and eukaryotic cells and surfaces.

Bacteriophage (or phage for short) are the most abundant and diverse microbe found in the body. Phages control and manipulate bacterial populations, prevent infection and disease and have important roles in regulating the microbiome and body that have not yet been fully elucidated.

A major study system in our lab is the mucosal surface – a microbe-rich, protective barrier that covers the covers the active epithelium of the body, including the gut, lung and urinary tract among other locales. The Bacteriophage Adherence to Mucus (BAM) model describes a novel phage-based immune system, whereby phages adhering to mucus reduce bacterial colonization of these surfaces, protecting them from infection and disease.

We are an experimental biology lab and utilise a range of cross-disciplinary techniques to investigate fundamental and mechanistic bacteriophage biology.