Program director for the MSc in Microbiome in Health and Disease
In the post-human genome project world, it has become clear that our health is dependent on more than just our genes. The current age of high throughput sequencing has revealed to us the amazing complexity and extent of the microbial communities that reside within or upon us. Moreover, we are now beginning to understand just how dynamic the interactions between the host and members of these communities are. These interactions are diverse, and the variations in these communities observed between individuals are dependent on a multitude of different microbial and host factors, including diet and inflammatory status. More importantly, it is becoming clear that different disease states are linked to significant changes in the make-up of these communities.
There is thus an urgent need to develop scientists that understand both the computational analysis of the huge data sets that are generated as we analyse microbial communities, as well as being able to interpret these findings in the context of human and microbial health. This new MSc programme aims to train the next generation of scientists to be able to design and analyse studies to investigate our interactions with our microbiome. In doing so, it will help define the next paradigm for host-microbe interactions that will make possible the development of different approaches to health and disease.
MSc in Microbiome in Health and Disease