Dr Elissavet Nikolaou is a Research Fellow in the Translational Microbiology group at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne Australia and holds honorary appointments at The University of Melbourne and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM).

She is an early-mid career microbiologist specialising in human clinical studies for pneumococcus and observational microbiological community-based studies. Her research focuses on bacterial diagnostics, epidemiology, and house hold transmission. Previously, Eliza led the microbiological and molecular testing of the Experimental Human Pneumococcal Challenge infection program at the LSTM. She led research which demonstrated the early kinetics of pneumococcal colonisation in humans, established the optimal sampling niche for pneumococcal detection and highlighted the importance of including older adults in surveillance studies. In 2020, she was awarded the Director Catalyst’s fund to design a method for minimally invasive self-sampling at home. This methodology was highly acceptable and feasible in families, supporting its use in future large bacterial surveillance and transmission studies, especially in low-middle income countries.

Currently, Eliza leads the Molecular Assessment of Thoracic Empyema in Asia (MATE-Asia) study aiming to improve the diagnosis of complicated pneumonia (empyema) in children and determine the burden of vaccine-preventable pneumococcal empyema. She coordinates 11 sites in six Asian countries and supervises 50 multidisciplinary study-dedicated staff across all sites. As part of this study, Eliza collaborates with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for assessing the performance of molecular methods for pneumococcal serotyping in pleural fluid samples. For this work she received the prestigious Robert Austrian Research Award in 2022.