Asst Prof Laura Nolan

PI, Environmental Engineering cluster, SCELSE
Assistant Professor, School of Biological Sciences, NTU

Email: laura.nolan@ntu.edu.sg

Dr Laura Nolan is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Engineering cluster. Her research group focuses on understanding how biofilms develop and how members of these communities interact with one another in a range of settings, including those relevant to the food chain and infections. Her lab uses a systems biology approach to obtain a detailed molecular mechanistic understanding of these processes. The aim is to then use this information to direct interventions that modulate the composition of biofilms to have the most beneficial outcome for the local environment or host.

She completed her PhD on understanding the role of small signalling molecules in biofilm expansion of Pseudomonas aeruginosa at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. After her PhD she was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship to work at Imperial College London, UK. Her research during this time was focused on the role of the type VI secretion system (T6SS) of P. aeruginosa in biofilm community interactions and on exploiting knowledge of this system to facilitate identification of novel naturally validated antibacterial targets for therapeutic development. After this she was awarded an Imperial College Research Fellowship to support her own independent research on biofilm development and community interactions relevant to the cystic fibrosis (CF) lung environment. She was then awarded a BBSRC Discovery Fellowship to work at the Quadram Institute, UK to continue her independent research work, this time with a focus on food spoilage biofilms.