Dr Patrick Harris is an Infectious Disease Physician, Medical Microbiologist and NHMRC Early Career Research Fellow at The University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research (UQCCR).    

Dr. Harris obtained a BSc in Psychology and Anthropology from Durham University, prior to acquiring his medical degree from University College London Medical School.  Following postgraduate training in the UK he worked as a clinical lecturer at the College of Medicine in Malawi, and completed specialist training in infectious diseases and microbiology in Australia.  For his final year of training he was a Senior Visiting Fellow in Infectious Disease at the National University Hospital in Singapore. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, many as first author, including publications in JAMA, Lancet, Lancet Infectious Diseases and Clinical Infectious Diseases. He completed his PhD in 2018 under the supervision of Prof. David Paterson. He was the lead author on the MERINO trial, reported in JAMA in 2018. This was an international multi-center randomized clinical trial (RCT) to compare carbapenem-sparing treatment options for ESBL and AmpC-producing species.  This has been the first large RCT to specifically address this question, using a protocol developed and endorsed by the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Network (ASID-CRN). https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02176122. The trial enrolled over 390 patients from 30 centers in 9 countries. 

His research has a focus on antibiotic resistant bacteria and the use of randomized clinical trials to define optimal treatment for these problematic infections as well as the application of bacterial genomics to clinical practice.