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Thomas Blackett, PhD Student at the University of Nottingham, was recently awarded the DWS Travel Grant to attend the Microbiology Society Annual Conference 2026 in Belfast, Northern Island and present his poster on controlling Clostridioides difficile infection through phage therapy.
We asked Thomas to share more about his research and experience attending the exhibition.
"With the help of the DWS Travel Grant, I was able to attend the Microbiology Society Annual Conference 2026 at the ICC Belfast. I presented my poster, which explored my research using bacteriophages as a therapeutic agent against C. difficile infection.
Antimicrobial resistance is a pressing issue for a whole host of bacterial infections, and phages are an exciting potential solution to this problem. My work mostly focuses on engineering phages to attempt to make them more suitable for therapeutic use against C. difficile in the future.
C. difficile is an anaerobic bacterium, so a majority of my work takes place within an anaerobic workstation, specifically the Whitley A95 Anaerobic Workstation, which enables me to culture the bacteria and perform my phage experiments.
At the conference, I had many interesting conversations with other researchers about my work, whilst also being able to discuss the work of others and take inspiration from this to apply to my own project. I had a great experience and hope to form collaborations with others in the field of phage biology, thanks to DWS!"
We would like to extend our thanks to Thomas for sharing more about his study and wish him all the best for his future projects.
If you think that you might be eligible for the DWS Travel Grant, please visit our travel grant page for more details.
England