Jennifer Onuora, Nutritional Sciences

Why Temerty Faculty of Medicine:
Having completed my MSc from the Faculty of Medicine, Newcastle University, England, I knew straightaway that I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto (UofT). I have read so much about graduate programs at the University of Toronto, and I chose this faculty because it offers a rich international student community. Most importantly, the faculty provides an opportunity for me to learn from renowned academics with access to world-class research facilities. There is a great opportunity for mentorship and collaboration amongst clinicians, students and researchers.

Why this Department:
I have a huge interest for maternal/child health and nutrition. In the Department of Nutritional Science, there are many supervisors whose research are focused within public health, maternal and global child health most of which are also affiliated with top research hospitals such as SickKids. I also love the structure of the Ph.D. program at the Nutritional Science department. It allows you to work towards your Ph.D. research from your first year.

Current Research Experience:
There is increasing evidence that the infant gut microbiota plays an important role in determining infant health and has been implicated in sepsis and the development of other related systemic infections. However, unlike the adult microbiota, the infant microbiota has not been fully studied especially in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs). It is important to understand the microbiota of early infants in these setting because according to UNICEF, 98% of neonatal mortality recorded worldwide occurs in LMICs.

Probiotic therapies are currently studied as strategies that can modulate the early infant microbiota especially in LMICs where low-cost interventions can have a beneficial effect on neonatal mortality. A new probiotic candidate Lactiplantibacillus plantarum ATCC 202195 (LP202195) was shown to reduce the incidence of sepsis, lower respiratory tract infections and death of infants in India. However, very limited information on its effects on the infant intestinal microbiota is available.

My doctoral research is aimed firstly at understanding and describing the natural variations in the neonatal microbiota of infants in Bangladesh and how these microbiota variations are affected by the infant’s mode of delivery and feeding patterns. Secondly, I will be investigating the effects of a probiotic intervention (LP202195) on the composition and diversity of the Bangladeshi neonatal microbiota.  I will be addressing these aims using shot-gun metagenomics and various bioinformatics pipelines.

Future Education/Career Goals:
At this stage, I am considering both academic and non-academic careers in maternal and child health, genomics and data science. I look forward to applying the bioinformatics and metagenomic skills that I will acquire during my Ph.D. to solving problems in the public health sector specifically for maternal and global child health.

Contact ambassador Jennifer Onuora