Meet Kaylyn Davis Tousignant – communicating the gut microbiome to the public!

Kaylyn is a recent PhD student who has submitted her thesis and is awaiting graduation. Her current role is a new one in her career, where she stays up to date with the latest scientific research and ensures it’s accessible to both her company and the wider public.

“By communicating the latest research in the field, along with Microba’s own data, I’m able to help drive our work forward and help others understand the importance of gut microbiome analysis,” she said.

Fortunate to land her ‘dream job’ fresh out of her studies, Kaylyn enjoys the opportunity to “spend all day thinking, learning and talking about something I’m really excited about and something I believe has a huge future in the world of healthcare.”

“These days, it’s nearly impossible to ignore the attention that the gut microbiome is receiving given its influence on so many aspects of our health. There is new research coming out every week to back this up. I love being able to translate that information to others in an effort to help people take control and make educated decisions about their health.”

Kaylyn studied a Bachelor of Science, Majoring in Biology and carried out her PhD in Biomedical Sciences. She also won the Lumen Prize Research Award throughout her studies. She enjoys communicating and promoting the area of health, passionate about the evidence supporting links between the gut microbiome and overall wellness.  She says that this is “such a powerful tool to help people improve their health” and it’s incredibly actionable.

Through her work and her colleagues’ in educating others on how to improve their gut health through diet and lifestyle choices backed by scientific evidence, Kaylyn believes that people can make simple and affordable changes that can have a huge influence on their health.

Kaylyn has learned throughout her studies and career that STEM is an umbrella term encompassing a diverse range of career opportunities. She is passionate about every failure or stumble in STEM being a chance to learn and adapt, mentioning that some of the greatest turning points in her research came from failed experiments.

Her PhD supervisor played a “huge role” in helping Kaylyn learn how to find something meaningful from what appeared a failure. She says that resilience and perseverance are some of the greatest skills to have working in STEM.

Kaylyn wasn’t always set on her career path and she says that she didn’t realise how many career opportunities existed in the field.

“Having always loved biology and research, I just assumed I would be an academic researcher and eventually teach at a University,” she said.

“When I realised that isn’t what I wanted to do, it was a bit overwhelming to try to come up with a different career entirely because we were never taught what else we could do. I’ve always loved creative writing but had never considered there was a chance for me to do that in the STEM field – I just accepted I’d be writing academic manuscripts. I’ve now found a career that allows me to combine my creativity with my love for science, and in an area of health I’m so passionate about. I really couldn’t ask for a better opportunity.”

To view some of Kaylyn’s work, visit www.microba.com/blog.