CV

Danna Gifford

Research Keywords

  • Microbial evolution
  • Experimental evolution
  • Antimicrobial resistance
  • Genomics
  • Bioinformatics
  • Thermophiles
  • Modelling and simulations
  • Evolutionary theory

Current Position

Lecturer, Teaching & Research Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester (September 2022 – Present)

Previous Positions

  • Research Fellow UKRI Innovation/Rutherford Fund Fellowship Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester
    (November 2017 – August 2022)
  • Research Associate Faculty of Science and Engineering, The University of Manchester
    (January 2016 – November 2017)
  • Postdoctoral Research Assistant Department of Zoology, University of Oxford
    (May 2014 – December 2015)
  • Visiting Researcher Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen University and Research Centre, Netherlands
    (April – August 2010)

Education

  • 2014 DPhil, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford
  • 2011 MSc Biology, Department of Biology, University of Ottawa
  • 2008 Honours BSc Biology & Minor in Statistics, University of Ottawa

Selected Publications

Full list available from Google Scholar

  • Kettlewell R, Forsyth JH, Gifford DR (2024). Evolutionary risk analysis of mutators for the development of nitrofurantoin resistance. bioRxiv. DOI:10.1101/2024.10.07.616996.
  • Kettlewell R*, Jones C*, Felton TW, Lagator M, Gifford DR (2024). Insights into durability against resistance from the antibiotic nitrofurantoin. npj Antimicrobials and Resistance, 2(41). DOI:10.1038/s44259-024-00056-1.
  • Jago MJ, Soley JK, Denisov S, Walsh CJ, Gifford DR, Howden BP, Lagator M (2024). High-throughput method rapidly characterizes hundreds of novel antibiotic resistance mutations. Nature Communications (in press). DOI:10.1101/2024.07.19.604246.
  • Al Baqsami Z, Palmer-Lowry RC, Darwent G, McBain AJ, Knight CG, Gifford DR (2024). Adaptation at the extremes of life: Experimental evolution with the extremophile archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius. JoVE. DOI:10.3791/66271.
  • Gifford DR, Bhattacharyya A, Geim A, Marshall E, Krašovec R, Knight CG (2024). Environmental and genetic influence on rate and spectrum of spontaneous mutations in Escherichia coli. Microbiology, 170(4). DOI:10.1099/mic.0.001452.
  • Shahabuddin AA, Clover R, Gifford DR (2023). Coincidence analysis of efflux pumps in the Escherichia coli pangenome. Access Microbiology (in revision). DOI:10.1099/acmi.0.000704.v1.
  • Gifford DR, Berríos-Caro E*, Joerres C, Simon MS, Forsyth JH, Bhattacharyya A, Galla T, Knight CG (2023). Mutators can drive the evolution of multi-resistance to antibiotics. PLOS Genetics. DOI:10.1371/journal.pgen.1010791.
  • Gifford DR (2019). Life on the frontline reveals constraints. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 3(11):1501–1502. DOI:10.1038/s41559-019-1021-7.
  • Knight GM, …, Gifford DR, …, KE Atkins (2019). Mathematical modelling for antibiotic resistance control policy: do we know enough?. BMC Infectious Diseases, 19, 1011. DOI:10.1186/s12879-019-4630-y
  • Gifford DR*, Furio V*, Papkou A, Vogwill T, Oliver A, MacLean RC (2018). Identifying and exploiting genes that potentiate the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2:1033–1039. DOI:10.1038/s41559-018-0547-x

Key Funding (>£2M GBP Career Total)

  • 2024 BBSRC Internationalisation Accelerator (£20,000, PI)
  • 2023–2025 BBSRC Responsive Mode Grant (£711,000, PI)
  • 2023 MRC Midrange Equipment Grant (£433,803, 5% Co-I)
  • 2023–2024 Royal Society Grant (£59,000, PI)
  • 2023–2024 NERC Exploring Frontiers Grant (£80,000, PI)
  • 2022–2024 Academy of Medical Sciences Springboard Grant (£99,916, PI)
  • 2020–2022 NERC/Mitacs Globalink Exchange (£15,159, PI)
  • 2020 Capital Expenditures Infrastructure Fund (£75,000, PI)
  • 2018–2020 Wellcome Institutional Strategic Support Fund (£250,674, 10% Co-I)

Research Student Supervision

  • 2024–2028 BBSRC PhD student in Evolutionary Biology (Primary Supervisor)
  • 2022–2026 BBSRC PhD student in Evolutionary Biology (Co-supervisor)
  • 2021–2025 Externally-funded PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology and Microbiology (Primary and Co-supervisor)
  • 2019–2024 BBSRC PhD student in Evolutionary Biology (Primary Supervisor)
  • 2017–2020 President’s Doctoral Scholar PhD student in Theoretical Physics (Co-supervisor)

Leadership and Service Roles

  • Associate Editor. Evolutionary Applications (2020–Present)
  • Co-Director. Microbial Evolution Research Manchester (2021–Present)
  • Academic Lead. Manchester Antimicrobial Resistance Network (2024–Present)
  • Lead for Early Career Researchers. Manchester Antimicrobial Resistance Network (2021–2024)
  • BBSRC Pool of Experts (2023–Present)
  • RESIST3 Workshop Co-Organiser (2024), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
  • Co-Organiser. SMBE 2019 Congress ‘Resistance Evolution in Real-Time’
  • Lead Organiser. Manchester Molecular and Genome Evolution Symposium (2016–2019)
  • Reviewer for journals including Nature Reviews Microbiology, Nature Ecology and Evolution, Nature Communications, BMC Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, FEBS Letters, PLOS ONE, PLOS Genetics
  • Grant reviewer for European Research Council, Swedish Research Council, Wellcome, Royal Society, BBSRC, HFSP
  • Thesis Examiner The University of Manchester (2021, 2025), University of Liverpool (2022), University of Leicester (2023), Wageningen University (2024)

Selected Meeting Invitations

  • 2025 Gordon Microbial Population Biology (Invited Speaker)
  • 2024 RESIST3 Workshop (Co-organiser and Speaker), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
  • 2023 University of British Columbia Symposium (Invited Speaker)
  • 2023 Banff International Research Station ‘Mathematics of Microbial Evolution’ (Invited Speaker)
  • 2022 Rank Prize Symposium Alternatives to Antimicrobials (Invited soeaker)
  • 2022 RESIST2 Workshop (Invited Speaker), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
  • 2019 European Society for Evolutionary Biology Congress (Invited Speaker)
  • 2018 RESIST Workshop (Invited Speaker), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
  • 2018 University of Toronto Mississauga Symposium (Invited Speaker)
  • 2017 Junior Awards in Microbiology (Invited Speaker), University of Birmingham

Undergraduate and Postgraduate Teaching

  • BIOL33031. Reproducible Data Science
  • BIOL65161. Statistics and Experimental Design
  • BIOL10422. Introduction to Experimental Biology
  • BIOL31351. Current Topics in Microbiology
  • BIOL67561. Programming for Bioinformatics
  • BIOL20000. Biomedical Sciences Tutorial
  • BIOL30030. Final Year Research Project Supervision
  • BIOL21090. Undergraduate Dissertation Supervision

Outreach and Public Engagement

  • 2022–2024 University of Manchester Community Festival: ‘You and Your Microbes’
  • 2020–2022 Outreach activities suspended by COVID-19 pandemic
  • 2019 European Researchers Night: ‘You and Your Bacteria’
  • 2019 University of Manchester Community Festival: ‘Manchester’s Women in Science’
  • 2016–2018 University of Manchester Community Festival: ‘Experimenting with Evolution’
  • 2016 I’m a Scientist – Get Me Out of Here! (UK-wide online schools outreach event)