Dr Joanna Hicks
BSc, MSc(Hons), PhD
joanna.hicks@waikato.ac.nz
My research takes two directions encompassing both fundamental and applied research. Firstly we focus on bacterial metabolism and regulation of gene expression to understand how pathogenic bacteria (such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae) are able to grow in unique, often inhospitable environments, and evade host immune responses. The development of resistance to antibiotic treatments is also central to this research. In the applied direction we are engineering proteins for biotechnology applications, such as RNA sequencing.