Emma Thomson is clinical professor of infectious diseases at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (and professor of emerging viral infections at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine). She trained in medicine in Glasgow, specialised in infectious diseases in London and carried out her PhD at Imperial College London and Oxford University before returning to Scotland to lead a virus discovery team at the MRC-CVR. Her laboratory uses next generation sequencing to detect new and emerging viruses in the UK and in Uganda and to explore how these viruses evolve over time. She has worked on SARS-CoV2, Ebola virus, the Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus, emerging rhabdoviruses, and hepatitis viruses. Her clinical work on SARS-CoV-2 resulted in the award of an OBE in 2020. She has identified several novel viruses with colleagues in Uganda and recently identified the adeno-associated virus-2 in young children with severe hepatitis in Scotland.
Notes from Emma about her talk
I’ll talk about some of the new methods we are using to look for new and emerging viruses in humans, animals and in the environment in Scotland and in Uganda. I’ll discuss some clinical cases and studies that I’ve worked on – including SARS-CoV-2, Ebola virus, Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever virus and a virus called AAV2, that we recently detected in children in Scotland who had unexplained hepatitis