PhD candidate Emma Voss
From half marathons to microbiomes, PhD candidate Emma Voss is no quitter when it comes to achieving both her personal fitness goals and professional academic goals.
Originally from Cambridge, Emma spent most of her holidays on her grandfather's farm in Palmerston North where her interest in agriculture first blossomed.
On one particular trip, her uncle found a lamb with a leg infection requiring vet treatment and that was when 11-year-old Emma first learnt about how antibiotics worked, piquing an interest in science that would remain with her.
As she approached her last few years of high school, she looked forward to pursuing this interest at university, but instead found herself facing an intense relapse of childhood asthma which resulted in repeated hospitalisations.
“Changes in medication lead to fatigue and failing fitness levels and I ended up in a position where doctors told me I would need to change my perspective about what I would be capable of moving forward, especially regarding my fitness goals.”
She humorously shares her stubborn refusal of that diagnosis, as she proceeded to sign up to the gym and get the support of a personal trainer to meet her goals.
Since then, Emma has run several half marathons, with her first full marathon coming up early next year. She has even been able to improve her breathing capacity by 30 per cent.
That same tenacity brought her to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology for her PhD studies. She wanted to be pushed out of her “comfort zone” and doing her PhD by distance learning from Waikato would do just that.
Eager to learn from the Department's leading microbiologists, Emma began her PhD research on the microbial community of bovine milk with a focus on Staphylococcus aureus.
“One disease that affects our dairy sector is mastitis, which is the inflammation of the mammary gland/udder tissue and costs New Zealand approximately $280 million per year,” she says.
Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most prevalent mastitis causing pathogens on a national, regional and farm scale and Emma plans on investigating this in bovine milk, comparing her findings with what is overseas.
She is doing this research with supervisors Christine Couldrey and Chad Harland from the Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC), and supervisors Professor Gregory Cook, Dr Sergio Morales and Dr Xochitl Morgan from the University of Otago.
Emma's PhD work will contribute to the LIC lead Resilient Dairy Programme. The programme, which is a collaborative partnership with MPI, LIC and DairyNZ, will enhance the health and wellbeing of the national dairy herd through disease management technologies and genomic advances.
“My hope is that the research into Staphylococcus aureus will lead to a thorough understanding of this pathogen and more effective treatments because agriculture is New Zealand's largest exporter and, having a farming background myself, I know how hard farmers work to make a living and so I hope to use my interest and love of science to make farmers' lives better.”
Emma's work will link directly with Dr Christine Couldrey's Milkomics project which will provide farmers with a diagnostic toolset through the sequencing of milk samples.
Emma encourages students to “follow their own plan” and not somebody else's because she herself has learnt a great deal from setting goals and “not letting any obstacle stop you from getting there”.
Written by the School of Biomedical Science's Communications Adviser, Kelsey Schutte.