Dr Mark Davies completed his PhD (2007) at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Australia, before undertaking postdoctoral studies at the University of York in the UK. In 2009 he was awarded an NHMRC postdoctoral training fellowship between the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK and the University of Queensland, Australia. In late 2015 he relocated to The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne as the inaugural Doherty – Sanger Fellow. His principle research interests are in the application of genome sequence approaches to understand clinical and epidemiological aspects of bacterial pathogens with a primary focus on Streptococcus pyogenes.