Bernadette Young began her medical training in Melbourne, moving later to Oxford, UK. She was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship and completed a DPhil in Clinical Medicine at Wolfson College, Oxford in 2017.

In 2022 she completed dual training in Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology and was appointed as a Consultant in Infection at Oxford University Hospitals, where she works in the Oxford Bone Infection Unit. She is also an Honorary Researcher in the Modernising Medical Microbiology unit of the Nuffield Department of Medicine and the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Clinical Tutor for Medicine at Oriel College, University of Oxford.

Bernadette’s research has included studies of bacterial virulence, revealing signatures of bacterial evolution during infection, and determining associations between S. aureus genomics and infection.

She has worked as an investigator in several clinical trials including the ARREST trial.

During the Covid-19 pandemic she led a national randomised controlled trial of lateral flow testing to release students from isolation and return them to education. In 2018.  

Her current research focuses on integrating pathogen genomic information to the management of infections including diagnosis and studies of transmission, to deliver benefits to patient care.