Colleen Kraft, M.D., M.Sc., completed residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in infectious diseases in the Department of Medicine, Emory University, as well as a masters in clinical research. She pursued post-graduate training in an ACGME-accredited Medical Microbiology fellowship. She ia a medical director of the microbiology section for Emory Medical Laboratories at Emory Healthcare, as well as program director of the Medical Microbiology fellowship. She is a professor in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine and the division of infectious diseases and serves as the associate chief medical officer of Emory University hospital. She rounds on the inpatient infectious diseases consult service so to link clinical microbiology to the bedside. Her research interests are in next-generation sequencing, microbiome therapeutics and healthcare innovation factors. She is very passionate about mentorship of trainees and training the next generation. She believes that creativity and innovation in federal policy can bring about lasting positive change in science.

Virginia L. Miller is a Professor of Genetics and of Microbiology & Immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her B.A. at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University (1985), where she studied regulation of cholera toxin expression with Dr. John Mekalanos. She did postdoctoral training at Stanford University with Dr. Stanley Falkow, where she began her studies on Yersinia and Salmonella.

After her postdoctoral fellowship, Miller joined the faculty at UCLA (1988), then moved to Washington University in St. Louis (1996). In 2008 she moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she served as Associate Dean of Graduate Education.

Miller has a long-term interest in understanding how pathogens coordinate the expression of virulence determinants during an infection; her current research focuses on Klebsiella pneumoniae.

Dr. Steven Finkel is a professor in the Molecular & Computational Biology section of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California. Finkel is also a senior scientist with the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations, an NSF-funded Science & Technology Center, where he directs an undergraduate research program focused on increasing the diversity of students in the STEM fields.

Finkel received his B.A. in Molecular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, his Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles and was a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School. Research in Finkel’s laboratory focuses on the long-term survival and evolution of bacteria, both in planktonic culture and in biofilms, including applications to bacterial respiration and electricity production. Among current topics of study are (1) mechanisms of survival in many organisms, including population structure at the genetic & genomic level and studies of the GASP (growth advantage in stationary phase) phenotype; (2) generation of bacterial diversity in different environments, including the roles of error-prone DNA polymerases in generating genetic diversity; (3) genomic and metagenomic analyses of evolving populations of microbes; and (4) understanding the role of extracellular electron transport in the long-term survival ability of bacteria in electricity-generating microbial fuel cells (MFCs) and human gut. Model organisms in the laboratory include: Escherichia coli, Shewanella oneidensis, Vibrio and Halomonas species. Finkel is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
 

Dr. Donohue received his B.S. in Life Sciences from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and his Ph.D. in Microbiology from Pennsylvania State University. He became a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2000 and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009. Dr. Donohue served as ASM’s president in 2013. His laboratory’s research analyzes pathways and networks that microbes use to grow, generate biomass, or produce alternative fuels from sunlight or other renewable sources of energy. Dr. Donohue is also Director, Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. 

Dr. Yates has been a faculty member at University of California, Riverside for more than 30 years. Her research has focused on characterizing and predicting the fate and transport of human enteric pathogenic microorganisms in soils, water and wastewater; development of methods for rapid, sensitive detection of infective enteric viruses and other environmentally transmitted human pathogens in environmental and biological media, human pathogen considerations associated with wastewater reuse and biosolids application to land; and the use of indicators for predicting pathogen occurrence and behavior in the environment.

Vaughn Cooper is an evolutionary biologist and microbiologist. He received his bachelor’s degree from Amherst College and his Ph.D. in 2000 from Michigan State University under the mentorship of Richard Lenski, where he studied the evolution of specialization in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment of E. coli populations.

He was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan, studying pathogens of the cystic fibrosis airway with John LiPuma. He was Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of New Hampshire from 2004-2015, moving to the University of Pittsburgh in 2015, where he is Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, and Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Dr. Cooper co-founded and is Director of the Center for Evolutionary Biology and Medicine (CEBaM) and founded and directs the Microbial Genomics Sequencing center (MiGS).

His awards include the 2010 Outstanding Assistant Professor at UNH and an NSF CAREER award. His research is supported by the NIH, NSF, NASA, and by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Dr. Cooper has published more than 70 peer-reviewed publications and invited chapters, and currently is supported by 12 active grants or contracts. The Cooper laboratory studies how bacterial populations (e.g. Burkholderia, Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter, and multispecies communities) evolve to adapt to new hosts and environments, particularly in biofilms. Other major interests include the evolution of antimicrobial resistance and why genome regions mutate/evolve at different rates. The laboratory also develops and promotes a laboratory curriculum called EvolvingSTEM, which enables high school students to learn key topics in evolution and heredity by conducting a week-long experiment with bacteria.

Dr. Elizabeth Marlowe is currently the Scientific Director and Head of R&D for Quest Diagnostics Infectious Diseases. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1999 and completed a Clinical/Public Health Microbiology Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2001 at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. After her fellowship, she continued as an Adjunct Professor and Research Coordinator at the Wadsworth Anaerobe Laboratory where her research focused on the microbiome of the autistic gut and the role of toxin producing anaerobes. In 2002, Dr. Marlowe joined Gen-Probe with her primary research in the development of rapid molecular diagnostics for infectious diseases. Her team conducted some of the initial prototype and assay feasibility work on the Panther Fusion System. From 2005-2016, she provided laboratory leadership within the Kaiser Permanente Regional Laboratories in both Southern California, as the Assistant Director, and Northern California, as Director of Microbiology. At Kaiser she oversaw the translational research program that included participation in > 10 clinical trials. From 2016-2019, she held the position of Global Director of Medical Affairs at Roche Molecular Systems where she supported several product launches including the cobas CT/NG, TV/MG, MTB, MAI & RIF/INH assays. At Quest, her team has led the diagnostic testing efforts for the coronavirus pandemic.

She is a diplomate of the American Board of Medical Microbiology, past president for Southern California ASM, past editor for the Clinical Microbiology Newsletter and an inaugural member to the Council on Microbial Sciences for ASM. She has served as a member of CLIAC, the federal advisory committee for CLIA. Her research areas of interest are focused on the translation of new infectious disease diagnostics for use in evidence-based research for clinical microbiology practice.
 

Dr. Joanna B. Goldberg is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology. She was awarded the 2012 ASM Graduate Microbiology Teaching Award. Prior to joining Emory, she was a professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology at the University of Virginia and at the Channing Laboratory, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She received her B.A. in biology from Boston University and Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from the University of California at Berkeley.

Goldberg has had continuous NIH funding for research on bacterial pathogens associated with life-threatening lung infections in individuals living with cystic fibrosis, particularly Pseudomonas aeruginosa. She studies the synthesis and regulation of surface antigens, including polysaccharides and protein adhesins, their role in infection and as potential antimicrobial and vaccine targets.

Goldberg was awarded the ASM Raymond W. Sarber Fellowship Award as a graduate student. As examples of her ASM involvement, she is a current member of ASM’s Council on Microbial Sciences (COMS), she was chair of Division D, councilor for Division B, chair of the ASM Career Development Committee, chair of the ASM Conferences Committee and president of the Virginia Branch.

Avery August, Ph.D., is a professor of immunology in the department of microbiology and immunology at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. He received his undergraduate degree in medical technology at the California State University at Los Angeles. After receiving his degree, he spent a year in the master program in biochemistry at the same institution, then entered the graduate program in immunology at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in New York City. After receiving his Ph.D., he took a postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory of Molecular Oncology with Prof. Hidesaburo Hanafusa at The Rockefeller University in New York City.

Following stints at the R.W. Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Institute, he was an assistant professor, associate professor, professor and distinguished professor in the department of veterinary & biomedical sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. In 2010, he was appointed chair of the department of microbiology & immunology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University in Ithaca. In 2018, he was named a HHMI Professor and vice provost for academic affairs at Cornell, and is currently deputy provost at Cornell University.

Dr. Kara Levinson received her B.S. in microbiology from Northern Arizona University, her MPH in hospital and molecular epidemiology from the University of Michigan and served as an APHL Emerging Infectious Diseases fellow at the Iowa public health laboratory. She completed her Ph.D. in immunology and infectious disease at the New York State Department of Health, Wadsworth Center, where she studied vaccine development and host-pathogen interaction in Vibrio cholerae. After obtaining her Ph.D., she completed a CPEP fellowship in clinical microbiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She then joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a Laboratory Leadership Service fellow, where she focused on laboratory management and outbreak response at the New Hampshire public health laboratory. Currently, she is the Deputy Director of the Tennessee State Public Health Laboratory.

Fred Hutch's Dr. Nina Salama studies Helicobacter Pylori, a bacteria that is a major cause of stomach cancer. The Salama lab studies the gastric bacterial pathogen Helicobacter pylori, which infects half the world's population and can cause ulcers and gastric cancer.

Julia Segre, Ph.D. is a Senior Investigator at the National Human Genome Research Institute within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Intramural Research Program, and integrates computational analyses with clinical studies to investigate the human skin microbiome and genomic epidemiology. The Segre group works on genomic studies of bacteria, fungi and viruses, with a particular focus on Staphylococcal species, Candida auris and human papilloma virus.

Segre is committed to scientific communities that recognize, integrate and champion equity, diversity and inclusion. She invests in institution-centered approaches that will change the culture of science to ensure that all individuals feel they belong in science and that institutions work toward their success.

Dr. Xavier is the Second Secretary (Primary Industries), Ministry for Primary Industries, Beijing, China.

His passion is to bring together diversity of thought and perspectives to advance the microbiological sciences. As someone who has gone down a non-traditional career path thanks to ASM, he is also passionate about widening career options for microbiologists, and thus broadening their collective impact on society.

Xavier cares about what microbiologists, together, can do for science; and what ASM as the preeminent society in microbiology can do for you. He believes the key to ASM's progress is not about knowledge or representation of a particular group of people, it's about asking questions in order to understand and interrogate issues, so as to bring out the best ideas and discussions moving forward.