We are thrilled to congratulate Dr Charles Foster, Research Associate with NSW Health Pathology’s Virology Research Laboratory at the Serology and Virology Division (SAViD), Prince of Wales Hospital, on receiving UNSW’s Best Publication Award in Basic Science.

The com­pet­i­tive fac­ul­ty-lev­el award recog­nis­es out­stand­ing ear­ly-career research and hon­ours a pub­li­ca­tion that was years in the mak­ing, exam­in­ing how SARS-CoV­‑2 evolves over time.

Work­ing as part of a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team, Dr Fos­ter helped grow nine dif­fer­ent strains of SARS-CoV­‑2 (the COVID-19 virus) in the lab­o­ra­to­ry for up to 100 gen­er­a­tions, sequenc­ing their genomes at every stage.

The research demon­strat­ed that the virus con­tin­ued to accu­mu­late muta­tions even in the absence of immune sys­tem or vac­cine pres­sures, with some of these changes mir­ror­ing muta­tions lat­er observed in real-world outbreaks.

Com­bin­ing exper­tise in bioin­for­mat­ics and virol­o­gy, Dr Fos­ter devel­ops new approach­es to bet­ter under­stand the evo­lu­tion and behav­iour of virus­es includ­ing SARS-CoV­‑2, RSV and influenza.

The project required years of lab­o­ra­to­ry exper­i­men­ta­tion, genome sequenc­ing and the devel­op­ment of ana­lyt­i­cal tools capa­ble of inter­pret­ing large and com­plex datasets.

“It was a long jour­ney and receiv­ing this award felt like real vin­di­ca­tion for the work involved,” Dr Fos­ter said.

“There were many chal­lenges along the way, but the even­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions to the sci­en­tif­ic record made it worthwhile.”

The award high­lights the impor­tant role NSW Health Pathol­o­gy researchers play in advanc­ing our under­stand­ing of infec­tious dis­eases and strength­en­ing the evi­dence base that sup­ports pub­lic health and patient care.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, Charles, on this well-deserved achieve­ment from all of us here at NSW Health Pathology!

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