Dr. Kwabena Duedu

Kwabena’s research sits at the intersection of pathogen biology, epidemiology, and public health microbiology, with a central focus on understanding how bacterial pathogens behave under real-world environmental and clinical pressures, and how these behaviours shape persistence, treatment outcomes, and disease dynamics in populations. His current research combines epidemiological analysis with mechanistic microbiology to uncover how everyday environmental stressors including chemical, physical, and oxidative pressures encountered in healthcare and community environments shape phenotypic plasticity, cellular decision-making, and survival strategies in bacterial pathogens. By linking patterns of infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance observed in populations with laboratory studies of stress responses and phenotypic switching, this work defines the biological rules governing persistence, recurrence, and adaptation. These investigations reveal how environmental history and phenotypic heterogeneity influence antimicrobial resistance trajectories over time, including the stability, cost, and reversibility of resistance phenotypes.

Kwabena has established a sustained programme of work characterising pathogen biology, molecular epidemiology, and antimicrobial resistance across clinical and environmental reservoirs, integrating population surveillance with molecular and phenotypic analyses in high-burden settings. This work has revealed how population structure, phenotypic diversity, and resistance dynamics intersect to drive persistence and treatment failure, contributing to a behavioural and ecological reframing of infection control and antimicrobial stewardship. His research has been funded by competitive awards from the British Council, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), the Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research (NIBR), the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH), Medical Research Foundation, among others.

Kwabena leads and contributes to internationally collaborative projects spanning clinical and environmental microbiology, with a strong emphasis on translating scientific evidence into public-health action and improved laboratory practice. His technical expertise includes next-generation sequencing, genomic surveillance, molecular diagnostics, and bioinformatic analysis of microbial populations. He provides academic leadership and mentorship, supporting early-career researchers and strengthening research capacity across diverse settings. He completed his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2015. He undertook postdoctoral training with the African Partnership for Chronic Disease Research (APCDR), University of Cambridge in 2016 as well as a TIBA Out of Africa Fellow with the University of Edinburgh. He worked as a Global Health Fellow at the Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA, United States. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Kwabena is currently accepting PhD students and research collaborators interested in pathogen behaviour, microbial phenotypic diversity, antimicrobial resistance dynamics, and translational public health microbiology.