Professor Johanna U Ericson (Fil.dr.)
Associated Fellow of the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald
(April - September 2023)
PhD in Microbiology, January 1990, Umeå University, Sweden
Since 2005 Professor in microbiology, University of Tromsø
Co-director of the “National Graduate School in Infection Biology and Antibacterials” funded by the Research Council of Norway (since 2016)
Fellow project: "Staphylococcus aureus responses to a human host and vice versa“
Staphylococcus aureus is a notorious opportunistic human pathogen and an important contributor to the overall morbidity and mortality in society. There is no effective vaccine available and treatment failure due to antimicrobial resistance, intracellular persistence, or biofilm formation occurs frequently. Thus, a broader knowledge about how S. aureus and its human host interacts with and responds to each other might reveal useful targets for future infection prevention and/or treatment.
This complex challenge calls for interdisciplinary cooperation to find new means to control the bacterium. The research stay’s overall aim is to broaden and strengthen the relations between the excellent research environment in infection biology at Uni-Greifswald and the Host Microbe Interaction research group at UiT, to develop and establish collaborative research on the subject.
My specific objectivesare:
- To analyse data in collaboration with researchers at Department of Functional Genomics.
- To establish a platform for future collaborative studies of S. aureus colonisation utilising the population-based Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP) at Uni- Greifswald and The Tromsø Study (TU) at UiT the Arctic University of Norway.
- To participate in, learn from and contribute to the research environment in infection biology at Uni-Greifswald.