Vanessa Sperandio, Ph.D., is the Jane and Bud Smith Distinguished Chair in Medicine, and a professor in the departments of microbiology and biochemistry at UT Southwestern Medical Center. She earned her bachelor’s, masters and Ph.D. at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil. She did her post-doctoral training at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

She was a Latin-American Pew Fellow in Biomedical Sciences, an Ellison Foundation New Scholar, a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases, and a National Academy Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow. She is the recipient of the ASM 2015 Eli Lilly and Company-Elanco Research award, and a winner of the 2014 GSK Discovery Fast-track challenge. In 2013 she was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. She was Division D chair of ASM, the chair of the ASM Education Awards selection committee, a member of the ASM Microbe program committee, chair of the HMB Track ASM Microbe program committee. She is currently the chair of the ASM Press. She was a member of the national advisory committee of the Pew Latin American Fellows Program, and Projeto Serrapilheira in Brazil. She is a member of the advisory committee for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund’s Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases. She currently serves on the editorial boards of mBio, Infection and Immunity, Journal of Bacteriology, and Gut Pathogens. 

Her research investigates chemical, stress, and nutritional signaling among the mammalian host, beneficial microbiota, and bacterial pathogens. The main tenet of her research is the study of how bacterial cells sense several mammalian hormones, leading to rewiring and reprogramming of bacterial transcription toward host and niche adaptation. She has also identified several bacterial receptors to mammalian hormones and reported that pathogens hijack these interkingdom signaling systems to promote virulence expression. She also translated these basic science concepts into strategies to develop novel approaches to antimicrobial therapy.

Carey-Ann Burnham, Ph.D., D(ABMM), FIDSA, F(AMM) completed her Ph.D. in Medical Sciences at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and fellowship training in clinical microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine under the direction of Wm. Michael Dunne, Jr. Currently, Burnham is a Professor of Pathology & Immunology, Pediatrics, Molecular Microbiology and Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine. She is the Medical Director of the system clinical microbiology laboratory at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and the program director for the CPEP fellowship in Medical and Public Health Microbiology Fellowship at Washington University. Burnham has held several editorial roles, including serving as an editor for the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Clinical Microbiology Newsletter, Clinics in Laboratory Medicine and the Manual of Clinical Microbiology, and she is the co-editor of the textbook The Dark Art of Blood Cultures. Burnham has held leadership roles in professional societies, including the American Society for Microbiology, Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute, the American Academy of Microbiology and the Academy of Clinical Laboratory Physicians and Scientists.

Gail H. Cassell, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cassell is the former vice president of Public and Scientific Affairs and a Distinguished Research Scientist for Infectious Diseases at Eli Lilly and Company. Her research focuses on Mycoplasma species and addressing multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. 

Dr. Cassell is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and Medicine, and has served on committees for various agencies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

Dr. Lynn Enquist received his Ph.D. in microbiology from Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, in 1971. He did postdoctoral training at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology from 1971-1973. He served in the U.S. Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health from 1973-1981. He was an Executive Scientist at Molecular Genetics, Inc. from 1981-1984. In 1984, he joined DuPont as a research leader and later joined the DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company as a senior research fellow. In 1993, he moved to Princeton University as a Professor of Molecular Biology and chaired the department from 2004-2013. He became an Emeritus Professor of Molecular Biology in 2021.

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the board of directors of AAAS and a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. He was a member of the Scientific Council of the Pasteur Institute from 2007-2013. He is a past President of ASM, the American Society for Virology, and was the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Virology from 2004-2013. He currently is the founding editor of the Annual Reviews of Virology.

His research interests include neurovirology, specifically the mechanisms of herpesvirus spread and pathogenesis in the mammalian nervous system. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers, reviews, books and has 4 patents.
 

Mary K. Estes, Ph.D., completed her doctorate in microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, followed by postdoctoral training in virology and epidemiology at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), Houston, Texas. Currently, Estes holds the Cullen Endowed Chair of Molecular and Human Virology and is a Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Molecular Virology and Microbiology and Medicine at BCM. She is a molecular virologist whose research is focused on understanding viral (rotavirus and norovirus) infections of the gastrointestinal tract; her lab dissects basic mechanisms that control virus replication, virus-host interactions and pathogenesis. Groundbreaking research in her laboratory discovered the first viral enterotoxin that is a novel calcium agonist, developed virus-like particle (VLP) vaccines for both viruses and cultivated human noroviruses in human intestinal stem-cell derived organoids. A rotavirus VLP vaccine is used for prevention of calf scours and a norovirus VLP vaccine is in clinical trials. Estes has published over 400 articles and served on local, state, national and global committees devoted to research and vaccine development. Various honors recognize Estes’ work: past president of the American Society for Virology, an AGA lifetime achievement award, the AGA William Beaumont Prize in Gastroenterology and the AGA Distinguished Mentor Award. She is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors and the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas.

Suzanne M.J. Fleiszig, O.D., Ph.D., is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She received a Doctor of Optometry degree and Ph.D. in Microbiology at the University of Melbourne. She completed her postdoctoral training in Infectious Disease at Harvard Medical School.
 
At UC Berkeley, Dr. Fleiszig holds appointments in Vision Science, Infectious Diseases & Immunity, Microbiology, and the School of Optometry. She studies microbe-host interactions using the eye as a model and key intrinsic defenses protecting epithelial surfaces in vivo against infection, conditions enabling susceptibility, and how the opportunistic pathogen P. aeruginosa colonizes epithelial surfaces.

Fleiszig is the current Chair of COMS. Previously she served ASM as Chair of Division D, an At-Large Division Councilor, an Interdisciplinary Councilor, and co-chaired the HMB community retreat. She serves on the editorial boards of Infection & Immunity, PLOS One, Frontiers in Cellular & Infection Microbiology, and PeerJ, and is a standing member of NIH’s Bacterial Pathogenesis (BACP) study section. She has also served as President of the International Society for Contact Lens Research, Vice-President of TFOS (ocular surface society), Chair of the Immunology & Microbiology Section for the Association for Research in Vision & Ophthalmology, and Chair of the Corneal Biology Gordon Research Conference.

Susan S. Golden, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California San Diego, where she holds the Chancellor’s Associates III Chair and serves as Director of the Center for Circadian Biology. Her research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanism of circadian timekeeping in the model cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus and developing biotechnological applications for the organism. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Microbiology and the National Academy of Sciences.
 

With a background in ecology & evolutionary biology, Dr. Jay Lennon became interested in the microbial world from a desire to understand how small-scale microbial processes influence ecosystem phenomena, such as the flux of energy through food webs. Towards the end of his Ph.D. at Dartmouth College, he was introduced to tools and theory in the Microbial Diversity course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) before conducting his postdoc at Brown University. He studied host-phage coevolution and its effects on nutrient cycling. Following this, he was an assistant professor at Michigan State University while in residence at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, before moving to the Department of Biology at Indiana University, where his laboratory focuses on the ecological and evolutionary processes that generate and maintain biodiversity in a range of ecosystems.

His laboratory has been supported by the USDA, NASA, NSF and DoD. In the classroom, he teaches an undergraduate course in "Microbiomes: Environmental and Human Health" and a graduate-level course in "Quantitative Biodiversity," which emphasizes basic coding, reproducible science, data visualization and multivariate statistics.

In addition to being a Kavli Fellow, he was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM). He currently serve as a governor for the AAM (2020-2023). 

Dr. Susan E. Sharp received her B.S. in Medical Technology and her M.S. in Medical Microbiology & Biochemistry from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and her Ph.D. from Texas A&M University.  Her post-doctorate fellowship was at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Conn. She served as the director of microbiology at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach and at Kaiser Permanente in Portland, Ore. She is currently the Scientific Director for Copan Diagnostics and an assistant professor at Florida International University in Miami. 
 
Sharp has been a clinical microbiologist for over 30 years, is actively involved with the American Society for Microbiology, leading the Committee for Laboratory Practices for 9 years and serving as ASM president in 2016-2017. She is a Diplomat of the American Board of Medical Microbiology and served as Vice-Chair of that board for 6 years. She is a fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology. She was selected as the 2012 bioMerieux Sonnenwirth laureate, the highest award given by ASM for leadership in Clinical Microbiology and recognized by her peers in receiving the 2017 ABMM award. Sharp serves as a member of the Board (2022) and a member of the Expert Panel for the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute and is a past member of the Board of Scientific Councilors for the Office of Infectious Diseases at the CDC. She has lectured both nationally and internationally and has published numerous scientific articles and book chapters in the field of clinical microbiology.

Dr. Alfredo Torres is the Herman Barnett Distinguished Professor in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. He is member of the ASM Education Board, Chair of the ASM Subcommittee for Minority Education and a presenter in the ASM Grant Writing webinar series.

Susan Weiss obtained her Ph.D. in Microbiology from Harvard University working on paramyxoviruses and did postdoctoral training in retroviruses at University of California, San Francisco with J. Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus. She moved to the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, where she established her research program in coronaviruses and where she is currently Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Microbiology and Co-director of the Penn Center for Research on Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Diseases. She is the past Associate Dean for Biomedical Postdoctoral Programs. She has worked on many aspects of coronavirus replication and pathogenesis over the last 40 years, making contributions to understanding the basic biology, as well as organ tropism and virulence. She has worked with murine coronavirus (MHV), MERS-CoV and, most recently, SARS-CoV-2. Her work for the last 10 years has focused on coronavirus interaction with the host innate immune response and viral innate antagonists of double-stranded RNA induced antiviral pathways. Her other research interests include activation and antagonism of the antiviral oligoadenylate-ribonuclease L (OAS-RNase L) pathway, flavivirus- primarily Zika- virus-host interactions and pathogenic effects of host endogenous dsRNA.

Dr. Henry N. Williams is a professor in the School of the Environmental (SOE) at Florida A&M University. He earned his master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and the B.S. degree from North Carolina A&T. Previous positions include professor and Assistant Vice President for Research at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and at Morgan State University, and Director of the Environmental Sciences Institute (now the SOE) at Florida A&M University.

His service includes the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Congressional Science Fellow, the NSF Committee on Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering and grant review panels at the NSF and the NIH. For his work mentoring and training students, Williams was recipient of the ASM 2003 William A. Hinton Award and the Minority Access, Inc. "Role Model of the Year Award." He is an internationally recognized leader in research on the predatory bacteria, Bdellovibrio and like organisms, and the microbiological quality of dental unit water supply. Several of Williams’ 70 papers have been cited as landmark contributions. By invitation, he has authored 3 chapters in the second edition of Bergey’s Manuel of Systematic Bacteriology (2005). Williams has organized, convened and presented at scientific sessions at ASM meetings, the International Symposium of Microbial Ecology, the American Society for Limnology and Oceanography, Argentinian Society of Microbiology and other organizations. Williams holds fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2016, he was selected an ASM Distinguished Lecturer.  Williams has been awarded numerous grants from government and private sources. 

Dr. Lynn Enquist received his Ph.D. in microbiology from Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, in 1971. He did postdoctoral training at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology from 1971-1973. He served in the U.S. Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health from 1973-1981. He was an Executive Scientist at Molecular Genetics, Inc. from 1981-1984. In 1984, he joined DuPont as a research leader and later joined the DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company as a senior research fellow. In 1993, he moved to Princeton University as a Professor of Molecular Biology and chaired the department from 2004-2013. He became an Emeritus Professor of Molecular Biology in 2021.

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the board of directors of AAAS and a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. He was a member of the Scientific Council of the Pasteur Institute from 2007-2013. He is a past President of ASM, the American Society for Virology, and was the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Virology from 2004-2013. He currently is the founding editor of the Annual Reviews of Virology.

His research interests include neurovirology, specifically the mechanisms of herpesvirus spread and pathogenesis in the mammalian nervous system. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers, reviews, books and has 4 patents.
 

Blossom Damania, Ph.D. is the Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill and also serves as the Vice Dean for Research in the UNC School of Medicine. Her research focuses on how viruses are detected by the immune system and how they evade host immunity. She studies how human tumor viruses cause cancer and investigates novel therapeutics to treat these virus-associated cancers. Damania co-founded the global viral oncology program at UNC-Chapel Hill Lineberger Cancer Center to address the increasing disparities in treatment of infection-associated cancers in low- and middle-income countries.
 
Damania received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School prior to joining UNC-Chapel Hill. Damania has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator award in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease, the American Association for Cancer Research Gertrude Elion Scholar award, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Scholar award, the V Founder Cancer Research award and the Society for Leukocyte Biology Dolph O. Adams Award.
 
Damania is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. Damania also serves on multiple national and international scientific advisory boards.
 

Oladele Ogunseitan, Ph.D., is a distinguished professor and University of California Presidential Chair at Irvine. He serves as Co-Director of the World Institute for Sustainable Development of Materials, and he directs the Center of Education for the University of California Global Health Institute. Ogunseitan earned his doctorate in microbiology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he discovered transducing bacteriophage in natural environments.

Subsequently, he earned a Master of Public Health degree at UC Berkeley, where he focused on environmental and international health. He was a Jefferson Science Fellow of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, and he received a meritorious honor award from the U.S. Department of State for exceptional teamwork and contributions to the successful achievement of U.S. goals at the third United Nations Environment Assembly. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of Collegium Ramazzini.

Dr. Rita Tamayo completed her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and conducted her postdoctoral research at Tufts University School of Medicine. She is Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine and a UNC Simmons Scholar. Tamayo’s lab studies the regulatory mechanisms controlling the motility and virulence of Clostridium difficile, the most common cause of nosocomial infections in the United States and an urgent public health threat. Her lab has characterized the role of the bacterial signaling molecule c-di-GMP and its RNA-based sensors (riboswitches) in controlling multiple modes of C. difficile motility, as well as cytotoxin production. In addition, her group is defining the mechanisms of phase variation and determining the consequences of the resulting phenotypic heterogeneity to C. difficile physiology and pathogenesis. Tamayo serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Bacteriology and Infection and Immunity, as an associate editor for Frontiers in Microbiology and as an ad hoc reviewer for many ASM and other journals.

Dr. Tenover is Vice President of Scientific Affairs at Cepheid, Consulting Professor of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine, Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and Consulting Professor of Biology at the University of Dayton. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in microbiology from the University of Rochester in 1981, followed by postdoctoral work in clinical microbiology and public health at the University of Washington (UW).

He was a faculty member in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at UW from 1982 to 1990 and also served as Associate Chief of Microbiology at the Seattle VA Medical Center. In 1990, he joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and served for 18 years as Associate Director for Laboratory Science in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, and then as Director of the Office of Antimicrobial Resistance for CDC.

He joined Cepheid in California in 2008, where, in addition to working on product development, he focuses his research studies on mechanisms of carbapenem resistance and the epidemiology of Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridiodes difficile infections. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Medical Microbiology and a fellow of both the American Academy of Microbiology and the Infectious Disease Society of America. He has authored more than 340 peer-reviewed journal articles and has written or edited 11 books.

Gladys Alexandre, M.S., Ph.D., is a professor and the Head of the Biochemistry & Cellular and Molecular Biology department at the University of Tennessee (UT), Knoxville. She has also a joint faculty appointment in the Genome Science and Technology graduate program, a UT/Oak Ridge National Laboratory venture. Her research addresses challenges related to sustainable agriculture through basic research; specifically, she is interested in strategies used by commensal motile soil bacteria used as commercial bio-inoculants to establish beneficial plant-microbe associations.

She received her M.S. and Ph.D. from Université Claude Bernard, Lyon I (France) and served as an Assistant Professor of Biology at Georgia State University before joining the faculty of UT Knoxville.

Her group has characterized the chemotaxis responses of bacteria in the vicinity of plant roots and elucidated mechanisms by which soil bacteria integrate signaling by multiple chemotaxis signal transduction pathways to coordinate a single response. Alexandre and colleagues have also identified several strategies by which motile bacteria couple metabolism with sensing during chemotaxis and discovered novel regulatory mechanisms for controlling the signaling activity of chemotaxis receptors. Her current research focuses on molecular mechanisms that underlie the integration of metabolic status with bacterial chemotaxis signaling and expression of nitrogen fixation in the rhizosphere. 

Alexandre’s work has been recognized with a NSF CAREER award, an election as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) and on the Bacterial Locomotion and Signal Transduction Board of Directors. She has also been active in outreach activities and in initiatives to promote those most underrepresented in science, including deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. From 2014 to 2019, she was the program director of the Program for Excellence and Equity in Research (PEER) to increase the diversity of students earning Ph.D.s in biomedically relevant STEM disciplines. She has mentored more than 65 undergraduate students in research, many from under-represented groups in STEM. She received the 2019 ASM William A. Hinton Award for Advancement of a Diverse Community of Microbiologists for some of this work. She is an external Advisory Board Committee member for the Rochester Bridges to the Doctorate program, Rochester Institute of Technology. She is an elected fellow of the American Academy for Microbiology, an editor for Applied and Environmental Microbiology and on the editorial board of the Journal of Bacteriology.

Esther Babady, Ph.D., D (ABMM), FIDSA, F(AAM) is the Director of the Clinical Microbiology Service, the Director of the CPEP Clinical Microbiology Fellowship program, an Attending Microbiologist and Member (Professor) in the Departments of Laboratory Medicine and Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City.

She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and completed a postdoctoral CPEP fellowship in clinical microbiology, both at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., before joining MSKCC. She is board-certified by the American Board of Medical Microbiology, a fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America and a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

She is a senior editor for Microbiology Spectrum and serves on the editorial boards of several journals. Her research interests include rapid diagnosis of infections in immunocompromised hosts, fungal diagnostics and the development and evaluation of the clinical utility of molecular microbiology assays. She has published extensively on these topics.

Laszlo Csonka, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Purdue University. His major research interests include the analysis of the responses of bacteria to osmotic and high temperature stresses, using Salmonella enterica as model organism.
 
He received a B.S. in mathematics from the State University of New York at Buffalo and Ph.D. in microbiology and molecular engetics from Harvard University.
 
He was awarded the 2009 US-Indo Fellowship from ASM to teach a Genomic Annotation Computer Lab Course at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics in Hyderabad, India, and was the recipient of the 2012 Science Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction, shared with 4 colleagues, at Purdue University.
 

Dr. Cameron Currie received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Alberta, and his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He spent 3 years as a faculty member in the University of Kansas Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology before moving his group to the Department of Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

His training and research is highly interdisciplinary, spanning the fields of microbiology, genomics, chemical ecology and evolutionary biology. His lab studies the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of symbiotic associations, with a particular focus on defensive symbioses and insect-microbe associations. His research, including extensive work with the charismatic leaf-cutter ants, has potential applications in fields as diverse as bioenergy development and antimicrobial drug discovery. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and has received several significant awards, including a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), a NSF CAREER Award and a Government of Canada National Sciences and Engineering Research Council Doctoral Dissertation Prize.
 

Carlos Javier Orihuela, Ph.D., a professor of microbiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Orihuela received a B.S. in biology from Baylor University in 1996 and a Ph.D. in microbiology & immunology from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 2001. Following a 4-year postdoctoral fellowship at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, he became faculty in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. In 2015, Orihuela moved to the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Microbiology.

Since graduate school, his research focus has been Streptococcus pneumoniae (Spn) disease progression: asymptomatic nasopharyngeal colonization → pneumonia → invasive disease. In obtaining a molecular understanding of this bacterium’s pathogenesis, he hopes to discover basic tenets of biology and identify new strategies for disease prevention or treatment. Most recently this includes exploring the molecular basis of cardiotoxicity during pneumonia, dissecting the anatomical-site specific gene expression of pneumococcal virulence determinants, identification of novel roles for pneumococcal surface proteins and examination of the age-related changes in alveolar macrophage function that enhance susceptibility to pneumonia in the elderly. Across all aspects of his research program, he strives to incorporate the most precise and powerful molecular tools and procedures. Today his laboratory is using isogenic marker-free Spn mutants and their genetically complemented controls, CRISPR-Cas9 gene-edited host cell lines, custom made transgenic mice and dual-species RNAseq for examination of host and bacterial gene expression in vivo. They regularly use Ingenuity Pathway Analysis and other bioinformatic analytical tools to uncover the biological significance in their ‘omics data. Over the course of his career, he has become proficient in the genetic manipulation of Spn and eukaryotic cells, protein expression and purification, flow cytometry, immunofluorescent and electron microscopy, and the use of a wide range of animal models pertaining to Spn disease. These tools and skills are an integral part of the research that goes on in his lab today. 
 
Orihuela has been recognized with a number of fellowships and honors including the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging.
 

Dr. Zhengli Shi graduated from the Department of Biology, Wuhan University, China, in 1987. She earned her Master’s degree at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 1990 and Ph.D degree at the Montpellier University II, France, in 2000. She has been a permeant staff at the WIV since 1990. Her research focuses on virus identification and viral pathogenesis, including discovery of unknown viruses in wild animals, molecular epidemiology and interspecies infection mechanism of zoonotic viruses. She is in charge for the viral surveillance among bat samples leading to the discovery and new recognition of a wide-array of SARS-related coronaviruses, filoviruses, adenoviruses and other novel viruses in mainland China. Her long experience on bat coronavirus led to the rapid identification of the pathogen of COVID-19 and its probable bat origin. Shi won the second Natural Science Award of China in 2018 and was elected as fellowship of American Academy of Microbiology in 2019. She has provided editorial service to Virology, Virology Journal and has served as editor-in-chief for Virologica Sinica since 2017.

Dr. Ann Arvin is the Lucile Salter Packard Professor of pediatrics and professor of microbiology & immunology emeritus at Stanford University, and the senior vice president at Vir Biotechnology. Her research interests include the molecular virology and pathogenesis of herpesviruses, with a focus on varicella zoster virus, immune responses of children to viral infections and vaccines and development of viral vaccines. She earned her A.B. in philosphy from Brown University, a M.A. in philosophy from Brandeis University and a M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her clinical training in pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco and her postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF and Stanford University.

Arvin was chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases Division, Stanford Children’s Hospital, from 1984 to 2006. She served as the vice provost and dean of research, Stanford University from 2006 to 2018. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association of American Physicians and the American Pediatric Society. Her service related to infectious diseases, vaccines and policy includes the NIAID Director’s Advisory Council; the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, DHHS; the NAS/NRC Committees on Policy and Global Affairs, Science, Technology and Law, Federal Research Regulations, Responsible Science and the Board on Life Sciences; the NAM Committee on the Scientific Uses of Variola Virus; the WHO Steering Committee on Research Related to Measles Vaccines; the NIAID Blue Ribbon Panel on Influenza; the President’s Council on Science and Technology H1N1 and Influenza Working Groups and the NIH ACTIV Vaccines Working Group for COVID-19.

Mya Breitbart, Ph.D., is a professor at the University of South Florida in the College of Marine Science, where she has been a faculty member for 15 years.  She earned her B.S. in biology from Florida Institute of Technology in 2000, and her Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego in 2006.

Her research uses metagenomic sequencing to explore the identity, diversity and distribution of viruses in a wide range of environments, ranging from seawater to sewage. In addition, her laboratory is using viral metagenomics to discover novel viral pathogens causing disease in plants and animals, as well as to explore the environmental reservoirs and transmission mechanisms of these viruses.

Breitbart is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Academy of Microbiology, the National Academy of Sciences’ Kavli Frontiers Fellow, and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, and was recognized as 1 of Popular Science Magazine’s “Brilliant 10” young scientists in 2013. She is also actively involved in scientific outreach activities and was recognized as the Girls Incorporated of Pinellas 2015 STEM Woman of the Year for her work inspiring young women to pursue STEM careers.

Angela M. Caliendo, M.D., Ph.D., is currently the Warren Alpert Foundation professor of medicine and executive vice chair of the Department of Medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Caliendo received a Ph.D. and M.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an Infectious Diseases fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston. After completing fellowship training, she joined the faculty at the MGH as an assistant director of microbiology with responsibilities for the clinical virology and molecular diagnostics sections of the laboratory. In 1999, she joined the faculty at Emory University School of Medicine, initially as the medical director of the microbiology and molecular diagnostics laboratories and later became the director of Emory Medical Laboratories, and professor and vice chair of pathology and laboratory medicine.
 
Caliendo is an editor for the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Open Forum Infectious Diseases, secretary for the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and a fellow of IDSA and the American Academy of Microbiology. She is a past member of the IDSA Guidelines Committee on the Diagnosis of COVID-19 and the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria.
 
Caliendo’s research has focused on the development of molecular diagnostic tests for the detection and quantification of infectious diseases and assessment of their clinical utility, molecular testing in transplantation, standardization of viral load testing and evaluation of HIV-1 RNA burden and the development of antiretroviral resistance in HIV-1 seropositive women. She has published over 170 peer-reviewed manuscripts covering various topics in clinical and diagnostic virology and microbiology and was a recipient of the Ed Nowakowski Senior Memorial Clinical Virology Award from the Pan American Society for Clinical Virology and the BD Award for Research in Clinical Microbiology from the American Society for Microbiology.    
 

Dr. Sonya Dyhrman is a microbial oceanographer in the Department of Earth & Environmental Science and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in marine biology from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and did her postdoctoral training at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Her research is focused on marine microbial ecology and biogeochemistry with a focus on understanding the microbial traits and tradeoffs that govern community structure, function and their concomitant influence over carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus biogeochemistry in the changing ocean.

With an emphasis on field observations, she has participated in well over 40 research expeditions. She is a rising co-editor for the Journal of Phycology and on the editorial board for Environmental Microbiology. Dyhrman serves on the executive committee, and is a co-PI, for the newly formed NSF Science and Technology Center: Center for Chemical Currencies of a Microbial Planet, working to advance the Center’s integrated research and education mission. 

She was a Sir Allan Sewell Fellow with the Australian Rivers Institute, a Marie Tharp Fellow with the Columbia University Earth Institute, a 2-time Kavli Fellow with the National Academy of Science Frontiers of Science Program and is an investigator with the Simons Foundation Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology. In addition to her research efforts, Dyhrman teaches classes on topics including microbiology, climate, oceanography and science communication. She has developed stakeholder monitoring programs to track toxic marine microbes and has developed a number of outreach activities, giving more than 1.5 million children exposure to science literacy standards and the process of discovery.

Dr. Ferric Fang is a professor of laboratory medicine-pathology and microbiology at University of Washington who studies bacterial genetics and pathogenesis. He obtained his undergraduate and medical education at Harvard University and his post-doctoral clinical and research training at the University of California, San Diego. He has over 35 years of experience as a clinician, educator and researcher studying bacterial genetics and pathogenesis, including the evolution of transcriptional regulatory networks, extracytoplasmic stress responses, host- and microbe-derived nitric oxide, bacterial iron metabolism and infections caused by Salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus. He also performs translational research to develop and evaluate molecular diagnostic methods for the rapid detection of pathogens and antimicrobial resistance genes and has performed analyses of peer review, publication misconduct and other aspects of the scientific enterprise. 

He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed articles and currently serves as the director of clinical microbiology at Harborview Medical Center and an editor of Clinical Microbiology Reviews. He is a former editor-in-chief of Infection and Immunity, past chair of the ASM General Meeting Program Committee, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association of American Physicians, the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Society of Clinical Investigation. He has directly mentored 63 undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate trainees, many of whom have gone on to successful independent careers in biomedical research, and is the founding program director of the UW Interdisciplinary Training Program in Bacterial Pathogenesis.

Elodie Ghedin, Ph.D., leads the Systems Genomics Section at the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases of NIAID/NIH in Bethesda, Md. She also holds an affiliation with New York University where she was director of the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology and professor of biology and global public health until May 2020. Before joining NYU, she was on the faculty of the Center for Vaccine Research and Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh.

The overarching theme in the Ghedin Lab is based on defining host-pathogen interactions to understand their effects on health and disease. The research program meets at the interface of molecular virology, microbiology, systems biology and genomic epidemiology but also converges with data science, material physics and bioengineering to develop novel research frameworks for discovery. A large part of Elodie’s studies are on characterizing virus diversity—primarily influenza, and now SARS-CoV-2—within and across infected hosts, and on defining the interactions within the microbiome of the respiratory tract to understand the dynamics of virus transmission. Another part of her research is on how filarial worms (parasitic nematodes) adapt to niches in their human hosts. The goal is to identify novel druggable targets and discover new metabolites and immunomodulators with therapeutic potential.
 
Elodie obtained her B.Sc. and Ph.D. from McGill University, and an M.Sc. from UQAM, in Montreal, Canada. She is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow (2011), a Kavli Frontier of Science Fellow (2012), and an American Academy of Microbiology fellow (2017).

N. Louise Glass, Ph.D., is a professor in the Plant and Microbial Biology Department at the University of California-Berkeley and a senior faculty scientist in the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Glass has focused on dissecting transcriptional regulatory networks in filamentous fungi associated with nutrient acquisition and plant biomass deconstruction using systems biology approaches. Glass also works on fungal communication that contributes to decisions on cooperation versus competition among fungi, a project that has been instrumental in defining molecular mechanisms of innate immunity in fungi. Glass’ more recent work includes developing high-throughput functional genomics approaches for non-model fungi to investigate plant-microbe-fungal interactions.

Glass received her Ph.D. from the University of California-Davis in plant pathology and performed her post-doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on fungal genetics/molecular biology. Glass joined the University of British Columbia Biotechnology Laboratory in 1989 as an assistant and then associate professor. In 1999, Glass moved to the Plant and Microbial Biology Department at UC-Berkeley, where she currently holds a full professorship position.

Glass is an international leader in systems biology approaches to fungal genetics, genomics and applications of fungi to bioenergy, biofuels and the environment. Glass is the UCB Fred E. Dickinson Chair of Wood Science and Technology, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a fellow of the Mycological Society of America (MSA) and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

Michael J. Imperiale, Ph.D., is a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on interactions between BK Polyomavirus and human host cells that determine viral persistence and replication. Imperiale also currently serves as Associate Vice President for Research Policy and Compliance at the University of Michigan. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Columbia University, and completed postdoctoral training at Rockefeller University before joining the University of Michigan faculty.
 
In addition to his research, Imperiale has been engaged in science policy discussions centering around biosafety, biosecurity and biodefense. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of mSphere.

Imperiale has been recognized with numerous honors, including being a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Award and Rackham Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award from the University of Michigan.

Dr. Peter Lipke is a professor of biology at Brooklyn College. He is also a member of the ASM Subcommittee on Microbiological Issues Impacting Minorities. He is a microbiologist interested in the surface of fungi. Specifically, his group studies how protein amyloids affect adhesion of the fungi, the host response to colonization by fungi, and whether amyloid-targeted drugs can be developed as antifungals. His interests also include science education, minority opportunities in science, mentoring and student development.

He has authored over 100 papers and several patent applications, and has been elected to the American Academy of Microbiology and as a fellow of the AAAS.  

Melissa Miller, Ph.D., D(ABMM), is a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. She is also the Director of the Clinical Microbiology and Molecular Microbiology Laboratories for UNC Medical Center.

Miller received her Ph.D. in molecular biology from Princeton University and completed the Medical and Public Health Microbiology Fellowship at UNC hospitals. She is the Chair of the American Society for Microbiology Clinical and Public Health Microbiology Committee, a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and an Editor for the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

Miller’s research interests include the development of accurate and cost-effective molecular tests for viral infections and the assessment of patient and healthcare outcomes associated with the implementation of new molecular technologies. She received the 2021 ASM Award for Research and Leadership in Clinical Microbiology and was a co-recipient of the 2021 ASM Special Recognition Award for leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Miller is also the recipient of the N.C. Governor’s Award for Excellence in Public Service, which is the highest honor a state employee can receive for dedicated service to the state and its citizens.

Nancy Moran, Ph.D., is the Raymer Chair and professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in biology in 1976, and then moved to the University of Michigan to earn her Ph.D. in zoology in 1982. She has served on the faculty at the University of Arizona (1986-2010), Yale University (2010-2013) and UT Austin (2013-present). Moran’s research has long focused on symbiotic bacteria that live in insects, especially on their evolutionary histories, genomics and biological functions in hosts. Her recent research projects have involved symbiosis in beneficial pollinators including honey bees and bumble bees, and on plant pests, including aphids and leafhoppers. She has mentored many graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Most have gone on to start their own research groups, mostly as academic faculty, and mostly working on insect symbiosis and related topics.

Moran is a member of the National Academy of Science, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. Her awards include a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Award, the International Prize in Biology, the Jim Tiedje award from the International Society for Microbial Ecology and the Lifetime Contribution award from the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. 

Kirsten Nielsen, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the Medical School at the University of Minnesota. Her research addresses how pathogens adapt in the host to survive and cause disease. Nielsen received her B.S. in biochemistry from Purdue University. She then performed studies on the antifungal activity of a maize ribosome-inactivating protein on the fungal plant pathogen Aspergillus flavus and the model organism Aspergillus nidulans, obtaining her Ph.D. in botany from North Carolina State University. Prior to joining joining the University of Minnesota, Nielsen was a post-doctoral fellow at Duke University were she initiated her studies on the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans.
 
Currently, her teams’ translational studies using animal models and human clinical isolates, along with their co-discovery of an entirely new in vivo fungal cell morphology, the titan cell, highlights the critical role of adaptability during host-pathogen interactions that misdirect the human immune system to dramatically increase pathogenicity and mortality. This research is transforming fundamental concepts underlying disease and is generating novel treatment avenues. 

Peter Palese, Ph.D., is the Horace W. Goldsmith Professor of Microbiology and the chair of the Department of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His research focuses on RNA viruses, with an emphasis on influenza viruses. His laboratory established the first genetic maps for influenza A, B and C viruses, identified the function of several viral genes and defined the mechanism of neuraminidase inhibitors (now FDA-approved antivirals) as well as pioneered the field of reverse genetics for negative strand RNA viruses. Currently, Palese and colleagues at Mount Sinai are working to develop a universal influenza virus vaccine that would be long-lasting and effective against all strains of influenza. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a shift in research direction as work on SARS-CoV-2 has become central to the efforts by the Palese laboratory. With his collaborators at Mount Sinai, they are now focusing on the development of a COVID-19 vaccine for low- and middle-income countries.

Palese was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2000. He is also an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (2000) and Medicine (2012), an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2014) as well as a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Palese was awarded the Robert Koch Prize in 2006.

Dr. Robin Patel is currently a professor of medicine and a professor of microbiology, the Elizabeth P. and Robert E. Allen Professor of Individualized Medicine, co-director of the Clinical Bacteriology Laboratory, director of the Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory and chair of the Division of Clinical Microbiology at the Mayo Clinic.

She is board certified in infectious diseases, as well as medical and public health microbiology. Patel’s research, supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), focuses on clinical bacteriology diagnostic testing, antimicrobial resistance and microbial biofilms. She has published over 500 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has delivered numerous national and international presentations.

In addition to her positions at the Mayo Clinic, Patel has been a member of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Council, and is the director of the NIH-supported Laboratory Center for the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG), an advisor to the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) Subcommittee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing, a member of the American Board of Pathology Medical Microbiology and Clinical Pathology for ABPath CertLink^TM Test Development and Advisory Committees, and an associate editor of Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Clinical Infectious Diseases. She is also a past chair of the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination Microbiology and Immunology Test Material Development Committee and a current member of a U.S. Medical Licensing Examination Item Review Group.

Patel is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, co-chair of the ASM Microbe 2016-2018 Program Planning Committee and ASM Past President (Presidency: July 2019-June 2020). 

Hank Seifert, Ph.D., is the John Edward Porter Professor of Biomedical Science at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He received his B.Sc. in chemistry from Beloit College, Beloit, Wis. in 1977 and his Ph.D. in 1984 from The Pennsylvania State University for work with Ronald Porter studying enhanced recombination between lambda bacteriophage and the E. coli F plasmid. His postdoctoral work with Maggie So at the research Institute of Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif. began his research into Neisseria gonorrhoeae genetics and pathogenesis. During that time, he developed genetic techniques for N. gonorrhoeae and began his field-leading study of the pilin antigenic variation system. The mechanisms behind the pilus diversity-generation system remains the focus of his research, as well as Neisseria pilus biology, the development of genetic tools for the research community and the interactions of N. gonorrhoeae with host cells.

He has mentored 17 Ph.D. students and 14 postdoctoral fellows in his laboratory. Seifert’s scientific contributions have been recognized by a fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Astor Lectureship at Oxford University, the Larson Lectureship at Washington State University and 2 NIH MERIT Awards.
 

Photini Sinnis, M.D., is a professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, with a joint appointment in the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine at the School of Medicine. She did her undergraduate work at Swarthmore College, obtained her M.D. from Dartmouth Medical School and completed a residency in internal medicine at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York.
 
Her research program centers on malaria with a particular focus on the infective stage of the parasite, the sporozoite. Sporozoite transmission is a significant bottleneck for the parasite and thus an excellent point for intervention. The Sinnis lab is currently investigating the molecular interactions between sporozoites and their mosquito and mammalian hosts that enable the parasite to initiate infection and the quantitative dynamics of sporozoite transmission, with the goal of informing the vaccine effort and improving epidemiological models of malaria.
 
In addition to her research, Sinnis is Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Institute and has had a long association with the Biology of Parasitism course offered in Woods Hole every summer, culminating in service as Course Director from 2015-2019. In this capacity, she worked to increase representation of students from disease-endemic countries and to maintain the informal atmosphere that is key to student learning, excitement and advancement to the next stage of their career. 

Steven W. Wilhelm, Ph.D., is the Kenneth & Blaire Mossman Professor of Microbiology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), where he is in his 25th year. After training at Western University, he moved to the University of Texas and then University of British Columbia before joining the UTK faculty. In 2016, he became a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM), as well as a Sustaining Fellow of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO). In 2021, he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2021, he was awarded (with Curtis Suttle) the John Martin award from ASLO for their contribution describing the viral shunt.

He studies synergies between microbial communities and biogeochemical cycles in lakes and oceans. Lab members use biomolecular tools—DNA/RNA sequencing, metabolomics and PCR-based quantitative analyses—to study viruses, bacteria and algae. His research is well-supported by various funding agencies; moreover, he is PI of an NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates program that is entering its 10th year. His group has graduated 16 Ph.D.’s and 8 M.S..’s and engaged >100 undergraduates in research. Notable service includes more than a decade as graduate director and associate head, multiple editorial advisory boards and presently the AAM Subcommittee on Elections.  

Brenda Anne Wilson, Ph.D., is a professor of microbiology and the Associate Director of Undergraduate Education in the School of Molecular & Cellular Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She holds joint appointments in pathobiology at the College of Veterinary Medicine and in biomedical and translational sciences at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. She is the Illinois Faculty Fellow for Sandia National Laboratories in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation.
 
After completing her B.A. in biochemistry and German from Barnard College at Columbia University, she was a DAAD graduate fellow of biochemistry at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München in Germany, studying virus labeling for in vivo tracking. She then earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from the Johns Hopkins University, where she received the Ernest M. Marks Achievement Award and an AAUW doctoral fellowship to study antibiotic biosynthesis. She began her studies on bacterial pathogenesis and bacterial protein toxins as an NIH-postdoctoral fellow in microbiology at Harvard Medical School, and during her first tenured faculty appointment in biochemistry at Wright State University School of Medicine.
 
Wilson's current research focuses on the host-microbe interface; bacterial pathogenesis and bacterial protein toxins; development of anti-toxin and toxin-based biologics; and comparative and functional genomic technologies and applications involving microbiomes in health and disease.