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Thank you for submitting your Gertrud Meissner Award application. Your submission is summarised below.

Your name

Matthias Merker

Your email address

Your postal address

Parkallee 1
23845 Borstel, Germany

Name of the candidate

Margo Diricks

Letter of recommendation

Candidate's publication record (if not included in CV)

A Summary of the major points of the candidate's research work

Dr. ir. Margo Diricksis a 34-year old postdoctoral researcher specializing in non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). Her work focuses on the genomic analysis of NTMs, including the development of bioinformatic tools for rapid taxonomic classification, antimicrobial resistance prediction, plasmid detection and outbreak analysis. She has analyzed genomic data from over 200 NTM species and have linked those to clinical data and, notably, the presence of plasmids, contributing to the global understanding of NTM diversity, evolution, pathogenicity and transmission. She created and validated the core genome multi-locus sequence typing scheme for M. abscessus, which is used worldwide to analyse population structure and transmission chains. Her research has led to multiple high-impact publications and several awards (two times for best oral presentation and one time DGHM best paper of the month) and has succesfully supported outbreak investigations and treatment recommendations in collaboration with several national reference centers. Additionally, she contributes to capacity-building efforts in 12 African countries through training activities under the EDCTP-funded PANgenS project, promoting genomic epidemiology of tuberculosis and NTM in low-resource settings.

I am a member of ESM

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The candidate is under 40 (or less than 7 years after PHD)

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Registered address:
c/o TREASURER
Matthias Merker
Parkallee 1
23845 Borstel
Germany

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© 2021 The European Society of Mycobacteriology

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