Kate Baker is a Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Genetics where she leads the Pathogen Dynamics Unit, and an Honorary Professor of Applied Microbial Genomics at the United Kingdom Health Security Agency. She trained as a veterinarian at the University of Melbourne (2006) before undertaking a doctorate in wildlife zoonoses at the University of Cambridge and Institute of Zoology London (2012). She then undertook a postdoctoral position at the Wellcome Sanger Institute before starting her independent research group at the University of Liverpool (2016) on the genomic epidemiology of bacterial pathogens and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Much of her work has focused on the globally important diarrhoeal Shigella pathogens for which she has applied genomics to uncover global transmission routes, improve pathogen surveillance and antimicrobial treatment recommendations, and contributed the development of diagnostics and vaccines. As well as her research leadership, Kate contributes to multiple policy initiatives around genomics implementation, AMR, and public health.