Amy Strydom

Profile

Amy Strydom obtained her MSc in Food Science at the University of Stellenbosch, where she specialized in the food borne pathogen Cronobacter. She moved to Bloemfontein in 2012 to obtain a PhD in Microbiology under the supervision of Prof Corli Witthuhn at the University of the Free State. Her research focused on another food borne pathogen, Listeria monocytogenes. Listeria is an opportunistic pathogen that can cause a severe infection Listeriosis. The object of the research was to establish control measures for these bacteria in a food processing environment, while collaborating with the food industry. During her PhD, Amy also worked on bacteriophages as a biological control agent, leading her to viral research.

On completion of her PhD, she started a postdoctoral fellowship under the supervision of Prof Trudi (H.G.) O’Neill at the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the University of the Free State. Her research focus is now the viral pathogen, rotavirus. During the last two years she has worked on developing a Next Generation Sequencing pipeline for identification and surveillance of group A rotavirus, isolated from human samples. She collaborated with the NGS unit at UFS and Mozambican scientists and she trained a PhD student on the pipeline. She will now focus on adapting the pipeline to identify other rotavirus groups isolated from animal samples. Amy joined the ARNTD as a mentee in 2017 and she looks forward to contribute to the research capacity in Africa.

She is a co-recipient of the maiden ARNTD-iSGP Award for the Mentees’ category.