"Environmental and Community Reservoirs of Antimicrobial-Resistant Enterobacterales: A One Health Investigation"

Mahfuza Akter, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Emory University School of Medicine, working under the supervision of Dr. Latania K. Logan. Her research focuses on the environmental transmission and evolution of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, in particular multidrug-resistant Enterobacterales, and their impact on community and public health.
Dr. Akter’s work incorporates environmental microbiology, genomics, and epidemiology to investigate how antibiotic resistance emerges and spreads between environmental reservoirs, animals, and humans. Her current research examines antimicrobial resistance in freshwater systems and households to identify environmental pathways contributing to community-associated infections. She completed her PhD in Interdisciplinary Bioscience and Biotechnology at Clarkson University, where her research explored the evolutionary dynamics of antibiotic resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa in spatially structured environments. Her broader research interests include antimicrobial resistance evolution, environmental reservoirs of resistance genes, and One Health approaches to infectious disease prevention.