Liisa Veerus, DPhil

Liisa Veerus is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Martin Blaser, working on the associations between microbiome and health. She received a DPhil (equivalent of a PhD) in Zoology from the University of Oxford, studying the reproductive tract microbiota of the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) and its potential connection to host evolutionary ecology in the lab of Dr. Tommaso Pizzari. She was awarded a BSc in Biology from Imperial College London, investigating bacterial invasion ecology in the lab of Dr. Thomas Bell, and carried out an exchange year in France during which she examined fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) reproductive behavior in the lab of Dr. Frédéric Mery. Liisa’s research focuses on understanding the interplay between the host and its microbiome, particularly in the context of reproduction, by utilizing both laboratory and computational microbiome research tools. Liisa cares about welfare in academia and making research accessible to all. She engages in science communication and has advocated to increase university admittance rates of historically-underrepresented social groups.