Ellinor Opsal Alseth

Ellinor Opsal Alseth is a Researcher and young group leader at the Department of Pharmacy, UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. She holds a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Exeter (2022) and previously served as a CMDI Early Career Award Fellow at Georgia Tech (2022-2025).

Her educational background includes a BSc in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Exeter (2016) followed by her PhD in Microbiology from the same institution (2022). Prior to her current position, she worked as a lab technician in the Westra lab at the University of Exeter (2017).

Dr. Opsal Alseth's research focuses on phage therapy, phage-bacteria evolutionary ecology, and phage resistance evolution, with particular emphasis on Acinetobacter baumannii as both an opportunistic pathogen and model organism. She specializes in phage biology with a focus on lytic phages, having discovered the broad host range Acinetobacter phage 'Mystique' during her postdoctoral work in the US. Her work bridges evolutionary biology and microbial ecology to address antibiotic resistance challenges.

Her publication record shows significant recent activity across multiple high-impact journals, with research spanning phage therapy applications, bacterial resistance mechanisms, and microbial evolutionary dynamics. Her work demonstrates strong interdisciplinary connections between computational biology, experimental evolution, and clinical applications.

• CMDI Early Career Award Fellow (2022-2025)

Dr. Opsal Alseth leads an active research group focused on the evolution of phage resistance using A. baumannii and natural transformation. She maintains strong collaborative networks across the phage research community, regularly contributing to and reposting relevant research on her Bluesky profile. Her laboratory work centers on the newly discovered Mystique phage and its applications in understanding host-pathogen interactions.