Steven Djordjevic is Professor of Infectious Disease and Group Leader in the Ithree Institute at the University of Technology Sydney. Professor Djordjevic’s research generates and interrogates genomic and proteomics data to mitigate against AMR, understand pathogen evolution and to identify and characterize novel antigens for vaccine development.

Professor Djordjevic is a cofounder and a member of the governing board and the scientific management committee of Ausgem, the Australian Centre for Genomic Epidemiological Microbiology, a collaborative partnership with the NSW Department of Primary Industries. 

Phylogenomics and molecular epidemiology are the tools he uses to study antibiotic resistance and bacterial pathogenesis and to shed light on how established and emerging pathogenic bacteria and the mobile elements they carry, evolve and circulate in clinical, livestock, agricultural, wastewater and aquatic environments – A One Health/One Planet Approach. His group also has a focus on the molecular, structural and biochemical characterisation of bacterial molecules that function in adherence, colonisation and invasion of eukaryote cells and a strong interest in the roles of protein processing and protein multifunctionality in bacterial pathogenesis.

His interests in mercury stem from the established genetic link between carriage of genes encoding resistance to mercury (merA) and antibiotic resistance on Tn3 family transposons which are typically mobilized by conjugative plasmids. Mercury resistance plasmids circulate widely in the environment and in human clinical and food animal settings.