# C.V. ## Biography I grew up in Southampton, UK, where I was exposed to science from an early age thanks to the enthusiam of my [chemist father](https://www.southampton.ac.uk/chemistry/about/staff/jro.page). Rebelling, I favoured biology, and a childhood pastime foraging for mushrooms in the [New Forest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Forest), as well as a fascination with disease inclined me towards studying microbes. Officially my career in science begun as an undergraduate in Microbiology at Cardiff University, UK, in 2009, where I completed my honours research supervised by [Dr Julian Marchesi](https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/81226-marchesi-julian), characterising metagenomic fosmid library clones expressing novel bile salt hydrolase enzymes. Recognising how much I enjoyed the freedom and creativity of independent research, I decided to stay at Cardiff University for a Masters by Research (MRes) in 2012. I spent a year working with [Dr Tom Connor](https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/81141-connor-thomas) untangling [the population genomics of *Salmonella enterica* serovars Paratyphi B and Java](https://mbio.asm.org/content/7/4/e00527-16), and undertook a short research stay at the Sanger Institute, Cambridge UK, conducting metabolic profiling experiments. Intrigued and excited by the complexities of *Salmonella* genetics and pathogenesis, I moved to the University of Liverpool, UK in 2013 to undertake my PhD in the group of [Professor Jay Hinton](https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/integrative-biology/staff/jay-hinton/). Applying the genomics skills I had learnt during my masters reseach, I got stuck into trying to understand the genetic mechanisms behind the emergence of a [novel pathovar of *Salmonella*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402672/) *enterica* serovar Typhimurium causing epidemic bloodstream infections in sub-Saharan Africa. The most striking differentiating feature of the African *Salmonella* genomes was the [presence of a novel prophage repertoire](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2017.00235/full), and I very quickly became fascinated by the biology of temperate bacteriophages and how they influence the lives of their bacterial hosts. I spent the next four years of my PhD studying prophages from African and non-African *Salmonella* isolates (in particular my favourite prophage [BTP1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/LT714109.2)) taking advantage of the [reams of RNA-seq data](http://hinton-jbrowse.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/JBrowse/index.html?data=00_SAMPLES/rocio-2017/D23580-TPM/data&loc=D23580_liv_chro:374181..384220&tracks=DNA,D23580%20Macrophage%20(+),D23580%20Nitric%20oxide%20shock%20(InSPI2)%20(+),D23580%20Peroxide%20shock%20(InSPI2)%20(+),D23580%20InSPI2%20(+),D23580%20NonSPI2%20(+),D23580%20Oxygen%20shock%20(+),D23580%20Anaerobic%20growth%20(+),D23580%20Anaerobic%20shock%20(+),D23580%20Low%20Fe2+%20shock%20() in possession of the lab to identify novel prophage biology from the transcriptome. After finishing my PhD at the end of 2017, I stayed for a short postdoc in the Hinton lab before moving to Boston in 2018 to take up a postdoc fellowship in [Professor Michael Baym](http://dbmi.hms.harvard.edu/person/faculty/michael-baym)'s [lab](https://baymlab.hms.harvard.edu/) at Harvard Medical School. Unable to leave behind my fascination with bacteriophages, in the Baym lab I am using high-throughput technologies and experimental evolution to dissect the evolutionary interaction between bacterial prophages and antibiotic resistance. ![Salmonella](/sites/g/files/omnuum5496/files/sianowen/files/salmonella.jpg) Depiction of a flagellated *Salmonella* *enterica* serovar Typhimurium cell based on transmission electron micrography. *Siân Owen & Rocio Canals* --- Attachments- [ picture\_as\_pdf sian\_v\_owen\_cv\_jan23.pdf ](/sites/g/files/omnuum5496/files/sianowen/files/sian_v_owen_cv_jan23.pdf) ---