Dinesh Aggarwal

Dinesh is an Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Clinician and a Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD Fellow at the University of Cambridge and Wellcome Sanger Institute. He completed his medical degree from the University of Cambridge and UCL, and has undertaken his post-graduate training in tertiary hospitals across London. His research is centred on the use of whole-genome, metagenomic, and 16S rRNA gene sequencing to understand pathogen transmission, carriage, and virulence. Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dinesh examined SARS-CoV-2 transmission within universities, care homes, and across national borders. This work impacted decision-making and policy at a national level during a rapidly evolving pandemic. Concurrently, Dinesh is working to understand the biological basis of Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriage and virulence in humans using samples from a national cohort of healthy human participants and regionally collected blood infections; this will highlight targets to disrupt carriage and limit the virulence of a highly consequential pathogen. Dinesh has employed various epidemiological, bioinformatic, and statistical approaches in his research, while improving laboratory processes to increase sequencing capacity.