Melissa Ward is a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow.  She is working between the University of Edinburgh, the University of Oxford, the International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, and the Harvard School of Public Health.  Melissa is studying the spread of infectious disease, with a particular focus on bacterial infections and antibiotic resistance.  Her work involves using pathogen genetic sequence data to understand patterns of disease transmission, with a focus on the spread of MRSA within the Scottish healthcare system and the spread of E. coli between humans and livestock in low-income areas of Nairobi, Kenya.  She obtained her PhD in Evolutionary Genetics (Biology) from the University of Edinburgh in 2012.