Member Q&A: Thomas Thompson on the central role AMI has played in his research journey
Dr Thomas Thompson is a registered pharmacist and still does the odd Saturday locum shift, which keeps him connected to what happens in practice.
”My interest in microbiology began here in Belfast, when I was an undergraduate pharmacy student at Queen’s and took on a summer project investigating marine algae as a source of new antimicrobials,” he says.
”That first taste of research eventually brought me back to Queen’s for a PhD and led to my current work on antimicrobial resistance and chronic infection.”
Along the way, he has become increasingly involved in teaching and the wider research community, becoming an Associate Fellow of Advance HE and, more recently, a member of Young Academy Ireland. On 1 September, he will take the next big step and begin building his own research programme in the School of Pharmacy through a three-year Illuminate Pharmacy Fellowship.
”A few years ago, I would never have imagined I would be in this position! AMI has played a central part in helping me get here,” he says.
What real-world problem would you eventually love to solve with microbiology?
There is one clinical question I keep coming back to: why do some prosthetic joint infections persist or recur even when laboratory tests say the bacteria should respond to the antibiotic being used?
That gap between what our tests predict and what happens in patients drives my research. I am particularly interested in antibiotic tolerance. With resistance, bacteria can grow at higher antibiotic concentrations. Tolerant bacteria may still be reported as susceptible, but they are killed much more slowly. Within an infected joint, biofilms, host proteins, nutrient limitation and the implant surface can change bacterial physiology in ways that routine laboratory tests do not capture.
The consequences can be severe, including prolonged treatment, repeated operations and loss of mobility. If we can measure tolerance reliably, we could develop tests that better predict whether antibiotics are likely to eradicate an infection and identify when antibiotics alone may not be enough. That could support decisions about treatment and source control, including whether infected tissue or the prosthesis needs to be removed.
want to help move infection management beyond simply asking which antibiotic inhibits a bacterium and towards understanding what will actually eradicate it in the patient.
Tell me about your journey with AMI.
When I started thinking seriously about becoming an independent researcher, I was publishing papers and going to conferences but still felt a bit outside the wider microbiology community.
In 2023, I joined the Junior Editor programme at Letters in Applied Microbiology and stayed in the role until January this year. Alex Rickard was my mentor. He works on biofilms and infection models, so he understood the kinds of questions I was interested in and was a good person to learn from. Marcela Hernández, the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, was also very supportive. I learned how manuscripts are handled from submission through peer review and had experienced editors I could approach when I was unsure about a paper or decision. Reading work from across applied microbiology also showed me which methodological problems repeatedly let otherwise interesting studies down.
That November, I received AMI’s inaugural John Snow Public Health Innovation Prize for my research using cold plasma to tackle biofilms and antibiotic residues in water.
“Over the years, AMI has also funded summer studentships connected to my work during both my PhD and postdoctoral research. Its travel grants supported my attendance at conferences, including EuroBiofilms. Through those meetings, I met clinicians, engineers and microbiologists working on related problems. Several of those contacts have since become collaborators in prosthetic joint infection and antibiotic-tolerance research.”
When I applied for the Illuminate Fellowship, I could point to the prize, the editorial experience, the student projects and the collaborations I had developed through those conferences.
How has access to AMI’s Research & Learning membership benefits helped you develop, discover, publish or share knowledge?
The Junior Editor programme gave me regular responsibility for assessing manuscripts and working through the peer-review process with senior editors. I learned to look closely at whether a paper’s methods answered its research question, which assumptions needed to be challenged and where an argument was not supported by the evidence. Publishing my own work through AMI journals also showed me what useful editorial feedback looks like: direct questions about clarity, methods and the strength of the argument.
AMI’s travel support allowed me to attend conferences that I might otherwise have missed, including EuroBiofilms. Those meetings put me in the same room as people approaching biofilm infections from clinical, engineering and microbiological perspectives. Several of those contacts later became collaborators.
Summer studentship funding meant that students could undertake substantive laboratory research rather than simply observe or complete administrative work. My own interest in microbiology began through a summer studentship, so I know how important that first opportunity can be.
The John Snow Prize gave the cold-plasma work external recognition at an important stage in my career.
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