Olivia Pilling
in Team
Olivia was a PhD student in the lab and a member of the Microbiology, Virology and Parasitology (MVP) Graduate group from 2019 to 2024. Olivia’s project was focused on the development of genomic methods to study the skin-dwelling parasite, Leishmania braziliensis. In her first paper, she successful developed Selective Whole Genome Amplification (SWGA) for Leishmania species and used this technique to investigate the population biology of this parasite in South America. This work constitutes a breakthrough for the leishmania research field since it allows researchers to amplify whole Leishmania genomes directly from patient material to carry out population genetic studies of this important pathogen, without the need to culture or enrich parasites. Olivia also wrote the first review article on SWGA, which laid out how this method has impacted population genomic studies for complex pathogens.
