Thomas Emil Andersen PhD

Thomas Emil Andersen (TEA) has an MSc degree in cell and molecular biology and a Ph.D. degree in clinical microbiology obtained in 2010. After 4 years as a postdoc, he was employed first as a senior researcher (2014) and later as associate professor (2016) at the Dept. of Clinical Microbiology, Odense University Hospital/University of Southern Denmark. Thomas Emil Andersen conducted the main part of his Ph.D. in the industry and has since broadened his network in the industry through several interdisciplinary projects aiming at improvement and development of medical devices and -materials. These projects are supported by private, public, and EU funding, and include collaboration with several other departments at OUH among these the departments of vascular surgery, urology, and nephrology. Thomas Emil Andersen is head of the Clinical Biofilm Group, a subgroup of the Research Unit of Clinical Microbiology, SDU. His group is a cross-disciplinary team of students and scientists with clinical and MSc backgrounds within biomedicine and molecular biology. The aim of the group’s research is to elucidate the pathogenesis of infections typically encountered at hospitals, such as device-associated infections, urinary tract infections, bloodstream infections, and intestinal infections caused by Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. The group has developed several unique infection model systems based on the flow chamber principle, which allows detailed studies of the interaction of bacteria with human tissue and epithelia. To support these studies, a number of animal infections models have been developed in mice, pigs, and sheep. Using these models and through close collaboration with the molecular microbiologists of CTM new knowledge on the molecular mechanisms of hospitals, infections are revealed and used to develop novel solutions e.g. for the improvement of medical devices.