Meet Professor Saheer Gharbia, the new Chief Scientific Officer at the Genomic Surveillance Unit

“I grew up in the Mediterranean,” says Saheer. “So for me, having olive trees, lemon trees, grapes, and jasmine is what brings the smells and the flavour of home.”

But the climate in the UK isn’t usually suitable for those species.

So Saheer, with characteristic determination and patience, spent the better part of two decades creating the conditions in her garden for those plants to not only survive, but thrive and bear fruit.

“It took me 15 years to create microclimates in my garden,” she explains. “I planted evergreens in a sort of a circle, which creates within that space a reduction of the exposure to the environment. And then I put a pomegranate tree in the middle, and an olive tree next to that. They survive by being protected by plants that can deal with the cold winter.”

Every year, she harvests an incredible bounty of impossibly Mediterranean fruit, which her family (and the local bird population) have come to appreciate as both delicious and normal.

The foresight, dedication, and ability to think outside the box demonstrated in her global garden is a reflection of Saheer’s professional attitude to what others might consider “impossible.”

“I started the first genomic service for public health surveillance in 2012 — almost 10 years before COVID-19,” says Professor Gharbia. “But it was seen across wider public health as additive rather than as essential.”

Then, in 2020 and 2021, the pandemic provided policymakers with a grim crash course in the possibilities of genomic surveillance for improving public health decisions. She, along with colleagues at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK) were called upon to set up regular genomic surveillance of COVID-19.

“There became a major appetite for the government to sequence and have a full resolution picture of surveillance for the country,” she says. “Just what I would have liked to do in 2012! But I was very conscious that we needed to make sure that whatever we implemented operationally and whatever we built was sustainable and could work for pathogens in general, not just for COVID-19.”

Professor Gharbia’s new role leading the scientific direction of the Genomic Surveillance Unit (GSU) at the Wellcome Sanger Institute is a natural evolution of her career to date. The Chief Scientific Officer position combines her experience with research, public health, policy, and knowledge translation. And the GSU is in a unique position to make a global impact.

“We aren’t driven by a specific country’s government, nor by academic discovery alone,” she says. “Instead, we sit across those pieces and are driven by the demand of the population. Where is the impact? Where is the harm? And how can we help reduce it?”

“We want genomic surveillance to be everywhere,” says Professor Gharbia. “We want our relationships and our work to reflect the populations around the world and reflect where the risks are. Because if we can work with risks at source, then we’re reducing their wider spread. If you don't have a truly global surveillance network, then you're not going to pick up the next deadly pandemic until it has spread.”

If a global genomic surveillance network able to proactively adapt to emerging threats seems impossible now, remember Saheer’s garden. With Professor Gharbia working on it, even something “impossible” like fresh, London-grown pomegranates will seem routine before long.