Dr Jane Hawkey
AMR IMPACT THEME
- Transmission & Control of AMR in Healthcare
EXPERTISE
- Bacterial genomics and phylogenetics
- Plasmid transmission and horizontal gene transfer
- Genomic software development
Dr Jane Hawkey is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow in the Department of Infectious Diseases, where she co-leads the Translational Microbial Genomics Program. She completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne, where her research focused on how mobile genetic elements contribute to the evolution of bacterial pathogens. During her PhD, she developed ISMapper, a widely used tool for detecting insertion sequences from short-read genomic data. She continued her research as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratories of Professors Kathryn Holt and Anton Peleg, studying antimicrobial-resistant bacteria such as Shigella, Salmonella, Klebsiella, and Acinetobacter. Dr Hawkey has been awarded both a Victoria VESKI Fellowship (2017) and an Endeavour Research Leadership Fellowship (2018).
Dr Hawkey is a computational microbiologist whose research uses genomics to better understand the evolution, resistance mechanisms, and transmission pathways of hospital-associated bacterial pathogens. She has developed several genomic tools for public health surveillance, including genotyping software for the priority organisms Shigella, Salmonella Typhi, and Salmonella Paratyphi B. Her work also includes the development of genomic methods to track plasmid transmission in Klebsiella, providing critical insights into how resistance genes spread in clinical environments. She is the lead bioinformatician for the global AMRrules consortium, which aims to establish international standards for interpreting genotypic antimicrobial resistance across a wide range of bacterial species.
AMR FOCUS
- Understanding the evolution of bacterial pathogens
- Developing improved genomic tools for understanding AMR
IMPACT
- Genomic tools and standards for interpretation of AMR across bacterial pathogens