Amy Strydom

Amy Strydom obtained her PhD in Microbiology under the supervision of Prof Corli Witthuhn at the University of the Free State. Her research focused on another food borne pathogen, Listeria monocytogenes. Listeria is an opportunistic pathogen that can cause a severe infection Listeriosis. The object of the research was to establish control measures for these bacteria in a food processing environment, while collaborating with the food industry. During her PhD, Amy also worked on bacteriophages as a biological control agent, leading her to viral research.

On completion of her PhD, she started a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof Trudi (H.G.) O’Neill at the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the University of the Free State. Her research focus is now the viral pathogen, rotavirus. She developed a Next Generation Sequencing pipeline for surveillance and characterization of rotavirus, isolated from human and animal samples.

In 2021 she joined Prof Marietjie Venter’s lab to work on respiratory viruses as well as SARS-CoV-2. She was also part of the NGS Consortium in South Africa and the genetic charaterisation of SARS-CoV-2. At the moment Amy is a guest scientist at the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment in Berlin working on transmission electron microscopy.