Urinary tract infection (UTI) is one of the most common infectious diseases worldwide, causing significant morbidity and mortality. With the sheer number of antibiotics dispensed to control it, UTI is a crucial driver of the global Antimicrobial Resistance Crisis. Treatment options and diagnostic tests are both suboptimal and have not improved for several generations. My laboratory studies the host/pathogen interactions of recurrent and chronic urinary tract infection at the cell and molecular level in close collaboration with clinicians and their patients. Our ethos is that clinical insights should feed the research programme, and research results are fed back into clinical practice as soon as possible. More recently, we have also been funded to investigate novel treatments for urothelial cancers. My lab employs live imaging, electron microscopy, confocal microscopy, microbiology, genomics, cell biology and molecular techniques, with the ultimate goal of understanding the bacterial life cycle in urothelial cells, in particular the invasive properties, biofilm formation and intracellular colonization of certain uropathogenic bacteria, and determining what features distinguish virulent bacteria from commensals that inhabit the urinary tract. We are also continuously developing and improving novel tissue engineering strategies to grow human organotypic bladder epithelia in culture, including innovative "organ-on-chip" technology, to study the basic biology of infection and repair, as well as to be used as a test-bed for novel therapeutic strategies. In parallel, we are collaborating with biomedical engineers and materials scientists to create encapsulated antibiotics and chemotherapeutics for bladder delivery.