Kan Yu is a PhD candidate in the School of Biomedical Sciences and the Marshall Centre at the University of Western Australia, supervised by Professor Mark Nicol and Dr Ritika Kar Bahal. His research focuses on elucidating bacterial–bacterial interactions in the upper respiratory tract during infancy. He is passionate about foundational microbiology research and its potential to drive the development of novel bacterial therapeutic strategies for the prevention of respiratory tract infections and to improve health outcomes for children. Kan is a member of the Australian Society for Microbiology and a sessional academic in the School of Science at Edith Cowan University.