Hello!
I’m a final year PhD student at NMBU working on antimicrobial resistance using large-scale metagenomics.
Why
What my PhD is about
In short: Antibiotic use and resistance in Norwegian cattle.About 80% of all antibiotics produced in the world is actually used in animals. We've known for a while that antibiotic use in animals drives resistance and they eventually come around to affecting humans by making infections (in both animals and humans) difficult + costly to treat and sometimes even deadly. Norway is an interesting place to study this because farmers here use very little antibiotics (one of the lowest in the world) and there are excellent registries that keep very good track of it all. So when resistance genes still show up, I want to know where they come from, why they stick around, whether they can move between bacteria, and how the Nordic countries could keep better track of the whole problem. It has four parts:
1. How much antibiotics do Norwegian cattle actually get?
You can't reduce antibiotic use if you don't know how much is being used in the first place. Norway has a national register of vet prescriptions, but the raw data has been (really really) messy — wrong units, impossible amounts, etc. I've gone through about 1 million prescription records from 2018–2023 (not manually, ofc haha), and built a systematic way to find and fix the errors, and put together the first complete estimate of antibiotic use in Norwegian cattle including the medicines used for udder infections, which earlier numbers missed because their data quality was so bad.
2. Which resistance genes live in cattle guts, and can they move?
Norwegian cattle get hardly any antibiotics, yet resistance genes still show up in their guts. If the genes survive without antibiotic pressure, simply using less antibiotics won't make them disappear. And some genes sit on pieces of DNA that can jump between bacteria, so they could spread to the wrong ones later. We (well, technically, a lot of people 5 years before I even started my PhD) sequenced all the bacterial DNA in fecal samples from over 500 animals. I'm using this data to figure out which resistance genes are there, whether they are stuck in place or on mobile bits of DNA that can move between bacteria, and what actaully matters the most among things like the farm, the animal's age, or a recent antibiotic treatment. I'm also comparing Norwegian cattle fecal microbiome with about 1,200 cattle fecal microbiome from around the world to see where they stand.
3. Does a climate-friendly feed additive change gut bacteria?
A feed additive called Bovaer makes cattle burp out (and fart) less methane, so it's being rolled out to help the climate. Before it ends up everywhere, it's worth checking that it doesn't also shake up gut bacteria or the resistance genes they carry. We have a feeding trial with 52 cattle where half got the additive and half didn't, and are following their gut bacteria and resistance genes over two months to see if anything changes.
4. How could the Nordic countries track resistance together?
Each Nordic country tracks resistance and antibiotic use in its own way, and humans, animals, food and the environment are usually tracked separately. That makes it hard to compare countries or spot a problem early, before it crosses a border. I was very lucky to be a part of the NoMoreAMR project. We mapped every surveillance system in the Nordics into one open website nomoreamr.org and wrote a roadmap for tying them together. It's doable, but it needs connected data systems and clear rules for sharing data across borders. (Paper published in Public Health, 2026)
Alongside it,
- I made and maintain openpathogen.org, an open-source, no-code pathogen profiling platform that runs everything client-side using WASM.
- I am a board member (communications leader) of SoDoC, a free and non-political interest organization for PhDs, postdocs and temporary research staff at NMBU.
- Made PanRes AMR gene database ontology browser while on a research stay at Patrick Munk’s lab at DTU, Copenhagen.
Papers:
Estimating antimicrobial use in Norwegian cattle (2018 – 2023): a quality assessment and error-correction approach for veterinary prescription data
- Status: Submitted (under revision)
- Citation: Baral A, Eriksen EØ, Llarena AK, Holmøy IH, Helgesen KO, Smistad M, Wasteson Y, Toftaker I. Estimating antimicrobial use in Norwegian cattle (2018 – 2023): a quality assessment and error-correction approach for veterinary prescription data.
- Contribution:
Early-life faecal microbiota in lambs is shaped by time rather than neonatal interventions
- Status: Submitted (under revision)
- Citation: Bjørnevik SV, Baral A, Noyes N, Knauer W, Rodriguez-Campos S, Martin AD. Early-life faecal microbiota in lambs is shaped by time rather than neonatal interventions.
- Contribution:
PanRes: A database of latent and acquired antimicrobial resistance allowing 3D-based protein homology search
- Status: Preprint
- DOI: 10.64898/2026.06.22.733705
- Citation: Vojtková M, Baltušis M, Martiny HM, Baral A, Pyrounakis N, Beleon A, Freitag R, Pico-Tomàs A, Kaas RS, Petersen TN, Munk P. PanRes: A database of latent and acquired antimicrobial resistance allowing 3D-based protein homology search. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2026.
- Contribution:
Genomic diversity and virulence of Pasteurella multocida in Norwegian calves
- Status: Published
- DOI: 10.1099/mgen.0.001735
- Citation: Ahmadi A, Oma VS, Ånestad LM, Falkeid SE, Baral A, Khezri A, Klem TB, Stokstad M, Llarena AK. Genomic diversity and virulence of Pasteurella multocida in Norwegian calves. Microbial Genomics. 2026;12(6):001735.
- Contribution:
Roadmap for integrated One Health AMR surveillance in Nordic countries
- Status: Published
- DOI: 10.1016/j.puhe.2026.106285
- Citation: Abramova A, Baral A, Osińska AD, Metsä-Simola N, Räisänen K, Ribeiro Duarte AS, Helgason KO, Halldórsdóttir AM, Pärnänen K, Simonsen GS, Sariola S, Lahti L, Bengtsson-Palme J, Wasteson Y, Munk P, Pettersen VK. Roadmap for integrated One Health AMR surveillance in Nordic countries. Public Health. 2026;255:106285.
- Contribution:
Calibrating for absolute microbiome abundances without spike-ins
- Status: Preprint
- DOI: 10.64898/2026.02.26.708180
- Citation: de Wit NT, Baral A, Fuschi A, Jacobs G, de Rijk S, van der Plaats RQJ, et al. Calibrating for absolute microbiome abundances without spike-ins. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2026.
- Contribution:
Plastispheres as reservoirs of antimicrobial resistance: Insights from metagenomic analyses across aquatic environments
- Status: Published
- DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0330754
- Citation: Witsø IL, Baral A, Llarena AK, Aspholm M, Myrmel M, Wasteson Y. Plastispheres as reservoirs of antimicrobial resistance: Insights from metagenomic analyses across aquatic environments. PLOS ONE. 2025;20(9):e0330754.
- Contribution:
I also like to:
Run (sometimes marathons)
I am quite the tortoise right now; ideally would like to run a full marathon under 3 hours some day in the near future. Some stats:5K - 22:26
10K - 47:30
Half-marathon - 1:41:10
Marathon - 3:56:27
Races:
2024 - Stavanger half, Oslo marathon
2025 - Göteborg marathon
2026 - Folloltrimmen på NMBU (5K)
