 I chose to study Salmonella for my research because I'm a microbiologist, a professional, and Salmonella is one of the leading causes of sepsis, and globally it's just a problem in gastroenteritis, food poisoning, but because it's a leading cause of invasive disease in sub-Saharan Africa and particular lineages have been described, we felt that it was important that we also characterised the Salmonella that we have in the Gambia, to look out for these particular strains that are described in sub-Saharan Africa. The implication for treatment is that it is important that we know what is, what most resistant antimicrobials are, so that those are not given to patients when they present to the clinic. I am very excited about this project because it's the first project that is looking at Salmonella at the whole genome sequencing level. We just published an article that although we find low rates of multi-dog resistance, antibiotic resistance, we have found that we have multi-dog resistance. So we have gram-negative organisms that are resistant to more than one class of antimicrobials. Although the rates are low, but it's interesting to know that we have resistance to different classes of antibiotics. Yes, research has really improved me as a scientist, so the research has improved my critical thinking skills, my cognitive thinking, and it's made me realise that it's not just enough just sitting on the bench and seeing that this patient is infected with Salmonella, but it's important to know what is going around in the surrounding. So you know if a patient has Salmonella, what is the likely type of Salmonella that this patient has was coming from the part of the world that we've come from. We are very resource limited, so resources we don't always find enough resources to really look at each patient in detail. So it's important that we have an understanding of what is going on in the surrounding to help clinicians to give the right treatment to the patient at the right time. So data that comes out from my unit is actually used to inform decisions in the policies across the country, from vaccines to clinical care to public health decisions. So this research actually will be of great public health significance I'm a mother of four, so that alone is a huge challenge. I work full time as well as do my research. So the dynamics are quite different from probably someone just focus on their research and not on other things. So having to do full time research, work as a microbiologist, overseeing a full microbiology lab in my unit and also involved in research, it takes a lot of dedication, it takes a lot of commitment and yes I sacrifice a lot of my time to be able to do this because it's something that I have passion for. So I see patients on a daily basis, I test their samples but I feel going extra mile to really look at what is going on in our surrounding is really, really important.