MrJames Kavanagh

James is a PhD student investigating the role of the respiratory microbiota in the immune response of children to viral infections. They work in the Levin group in the section of Paediatric Infectious Diseases and their project work is part of the PERFORM study, an international, EU funded study, seeking to improve the management of febrile illnesses. His work aims to integrate Oxford Nanopore sequencing data with transcriptomic data to uncover patterns in immune response of patients suffering from viral infections, with an aim to improve the diagnosis of such infections.

Prior to starting a PhD, James worked as a research assistant in the Modernising Medical Microbiology group (MMM) at the University of Oxford. Their work focussed on using Oxford Nanopore sequencing to improve our understanding of antimicrobial resistance in a variety of contexts, from diagnostics to agriculture.

Before this, James graduated from the Erasmus Mundus Master's in Evolutionary biology (MEME), a two-year, research based, post-graduate joint course between four European universities and Harvard.

James is an active member of Imperial 600, the universities LGBTQIA network.