Salom Gnana Thanga Vincent
| Grant Category: | Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowships (Research) |
| Project Title: | Microplastics-associated antimicrobial resistance in sewage: The double whammy of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and their genes |
| Field of Study: | Public Health |
| Home Institution: | University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala |
| Host Institution: | Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey , New Brunswick, NJ |
| Grant Start Month: | September 2025 |
| Duration of Grant: | Six months |
Brief Bio:
Dr. Salom Gnana Thanga Vincent (Association of Commonwealth Universities Blue Charter Fellow: 2019-2020) is a Professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Kerala, Kerala, India. She is a graduate in agriculture, a postgraduate, and a doctorate in environmental sciences from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. Prof. Vincent worked as Head of the Department of Environmental Science for two terms and as the Director of the School of Earth System Sciences, University of Kerala. She is a member of the Scientific Strategic Board and adjunct faculty of the Centre of Excellence in Microbiome (CoEM), Government of Kerala, India. She is a member of the editorial board of Wetlands Ecology and Management and associate editor for Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science. Her broad research area is the benthic ecology of coastal ecosystems. Her work specifically focuses on the structural and functional diversity of microbes in the coastal environment of Kerala and relates the benthic diversity to environmental and anthropogenic impacts. At present, her research is also focused on the evaluation of environmental factors that influence the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance and the distribution of microplastics.
During her project for the Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship, Prof. Vincent aims to explore the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) and antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) in microplastics of sewage. The work will contribute to the understanding of how microplastics act as a ‘Trojan horse’ in the environmental spread of ARB and ARGs.