Dr Ash Porter
NA | ashleigh.porter@unimelb.edu.au
- Position:
- Research Officer
- Theme(s):
- Viral Infectious Diseases, Bacterial and Parasitic Infections
- Discipline(s):
- Discovery Research, Computational Science and Genomics, Public Health
- Unit(s):
- Department of Microbiology and Immunology (DMI) , Microbiological Diagnostic Unit (MDU) Public Health Laboratory, The University of Melbourne
Ash joined the Doherty Insitute and the Howden Group under supervision of Sebastian Duchene as a postdoctoral research officer at the end of 2020. Their primary research focusese on zoonotic viral evolution, specifically how viruses emerge and evolve in new hosts. They are currently working on the COVID-19 pandemic response, examining how the SARS-CoV-2 virus evolves and spreads via phylodynamic modelling.
They previously completed a PhD at the University of Sydney under the supervison of Professor Edward Holmes, where they utilised next-generation sequencing and genomics to identify diverse novel viruses, as part of the effort of exploring the hidden virosphere.
Ash has worked in many different fields (including pathogen genomics, ancient DNA, metagenomics and phylogenetics) and has in-depth knowledge of both molecular biology and bioinformatics. To date, they are an author of eight peer-review articles, with 71 citations, and have presented at national and international conferences.