Published research works of Paul N. Levett

In this thesis, I present my published works in the broad field of medical microbiology. Over a period of thirty years I have worked in a range of settings,. including hospital and public health laboratories, major reference laboratories and academic science departments. I have studied significant public health issues associated with each position, and therefore, while there is no single theme in my work, the emphasis of my research has been very much on the development and validation of methods and their application to public health microbiology. My early work was on obligately anaerobic bacteria. I began to study Clostridium difficile during my doctoral research and continued for several years after I completed my PhD. My expertise in anaerobic microbiology led to several book chapters and ultimately to an undergraduate textbook and an edited volume on anaerobic microbiology methods. My work on anaerobic bacteria forms one of three themes in my commentary. During my tenure at the University of Ulster; I began to broaden my research to encompass pathogens in the environment. Areas of interest included the survival of pathogenic bacteria during anaerobic digestion of cattle slurry and the anaerobic bacterial flora of flax retting. I moved to the University of West Indies in Barbados, where for 13 years I taught microbiology to medical students and provided clinical microbiology support to the hospital and public health laboratories. This venue provided me with the opportunity to follow a diverse research agenda, with a strong concentration on diseases of local and regional public health importance. I have included some of this work in my third commentary theme, clinical and public health microbiology. My major contributions to the field have undoubtedly been in the diagnosis, taxonomy and epidemiology of leptospirosis. I began working on leptospirosis in 1992 in the former Medical Research Council laboratory in Barbados. My work here included both serological and molecular diagnostic studies, and epidemiological research on reservoir animals and other zoonotic diseases. After moving to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), my work was focussed on developing tools for molecular diagnosis and molecular typing of leptospires and on taxonomy of leptospires. At the CDC, I was also the Acting Chief of the Special Bacteriology Reference Laboratory. In this capacity, I had the opportunity to lead a group focussed on the identification and characterization of previously unrecognised bacterial pathogens. Some of this work is included in my third commentary theme. I moved to Saskatchewan in 2003, to my current position in the provincial public health laboratory. My research in Saskatchewan has been directed towards the use of molecular techniques for diagnosis and epidemiological typing of significant public health pathogens, while mentoring younger scientists. Community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is a public health challenge in our communities and I have made significant contributions to a collaborative effort to understand and control these infections in Saskatchewan. In recent years I also have assumed a leadership role in biosafety and biosecurity regulatory issues and in quality assurance and proficiency testing. An abbreviated copy of my curriculum vitae is included to provide an indication both of the range of my research work and my other contributions to the field. In the interests of brevity, papers presented at conferences and published abstracts are not included.

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