Denise M. Akob, Ph.D., is a microbial ecologist and biogeochemist whose research aims to understand interactions between microbes and their environment in order to solve anthropogenic issues. She obtained her Ph.D. in biogeochemical oceanography from the Florida State University in 2008, and then was a Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellow at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena from 2008-2012. Akob joined the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 2012 as the head of the Reston Microbiology Laboratory, and moved to the Geology, Energy, and Minerals Science Center in 2020.

Akob's research focuses primarily on understanding microbial impacts on Cold War Biogeochemistry (uranium and chlorinated solvent contamination); energy production (either by mitigating degradation of contaminants—from hydraulic fracturing or oil spills—or by enhancing natural gas production) and carbon cycling. She has published more than 40 papers on uranium bioremediation, microbe-metal interactions, subsurface biodiversity, acetylenotrophy and environmental effects of oil and gas development.

Akob is an associate editor for Biogeosciences and serves on the editorial board of Applied and Environmental Microbiology and FEMS Microbiology Ecology. In addition, Akob is the councilor of the Washington, D.C. Branch of ASM. She was vice-chair of the 2021 Applied and Environmental Microbiology Gordon Research Conference, and received a USGS Early Career Leadership Award in 2017 for her outstanding service and scientific achievements in representing the agency.

Heidi B. Kaplan, Ph.D., is associate professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at McGovern Medical School, part of UTHealth, Houston. She received her Ph.D. in Microbiology at Cornell with E. Peter Greenberg, studying Vibrio fisheri autoinduction, which became known as quorum signaling. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University with Dale Kaiser studying Myxococcus xanthus development.
 
Kaplan’s research focuses on the complex behavioral responses of bacterial communities to their changing environment. She has a special interest in the cell-cell communication of surface-attached communities, termed biofilms. Specifically, her group examines the physiology, interactions and dynamics orchestrating the developmental programs that control the initiation and dissolution of a variety of model biofilms.
 
Kaplan is excited to represent the Texas ASM Branch as their councilor. Her extensive involvement with the Texas Branch includes serving as President and Secretary. Kaplan has served ASM as chair of the ASM Distinguished Lecturer Committee and as a member of the Career Development Grants for Postdoctoral Women Committee. In addition, she is advisor to the very active Texas Medical Center ASM Graduate Student and Postdoc Chapter. Kaplan also served as chair of the ASM Conferences on Cell-Cell Communication in Bacteria and Prokaryotic Development.  
 

Colleen Kraft, M.D., M.S., completed residency in internal medicine and fellowship in infectious diseases in the Department of Medicine, Emory University, as well as a master's in clinical research. She pursued post-graduate training in an ACGME-accredited medical microbiology fellowship.

Kraft is 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 as to link clinical microbiology to the bedside.

Kraft's 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, Ph.D., 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.

Theresa M. Koehler, Ph.D., is a professor and chair for the department of microbiology and molecular genetics at the McGovern Medical School, University of Texas, Houston.

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). 

Victor DiRita, Ph.D., is the Rudolph Hugh Endowed Chair in Microbial Pathogenesis and Chairman of the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at Michigan State University. His lab studies molecular mechanisms of bacterial pathogens, with particular focus on gut pathogens Vibrio cholerae and Campylobacter jejuni.

DiRita also serves as Chair of the ASM Membership Board and Editor of the Journal of Bacteriology. He asks you to check out all the great things that the American Society for Microbiology has to offer, to join if you are not a member and to renew if you are! DiRita also invites you to follow him on Twitter.

Stefano Bertuzzi, Ph.D., MPH, is the Chief Executive Officer of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). Bertuzzi has wide experience in science policy and scholarly publishing. Prior to joining as the CEO of ASM, Bertuzzi was the Executive Director at the American Society for Cell Biology for 3 years and was a senior scientific executive at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he served as Director of the Office of Science Policy, Planning, and Communications at the National Institute of Mental Health and as a science policy advisor to the NIH Director, Dr. Elias Zerhouni. He also served as Director of Neurogenetic Laboratory in the Dulbecco Institute Telethon Scientist in Milan, Italy.

Bertuzzi received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biotechnology from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, Italy with a fellowship in the Microbiology Institute, and his Master’s in Public Health (MPH) from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore with a specialization in health policy.

Throughout his career, Bertuzzi led the U.S. government negotiations with the European Union (EU) to achieve funding reciprocity between the NIH and the EU. He also worked with the Obama White House to develop an information system to capture the benefits of scientific investments during the Great Recession of 2008. He is one of the leaders who spearheaded the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) to fight the misuse of journal impact factor metric. He contributed to the NIH revision of the peer review system and to the development of the key public access policy for NIH funded research, which started the Open Access movement in scholarly publishing.

Most recently, Bertuzzi led ASM's efforts to address the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This included working directly with the White House COVID-19 Task Force, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to increase access to diagnostic testing supplies and address roadblocks to coronavirus testing. Bertuzzi penned a New York Times editorial and an mBio editorial outlining testing roadblocks and emphasizing the need for microbiologists and other scientists to support clinical laboratories to help contain the pandemic.

He has authored numerous research publications, editorials and science policy pieces in top journals and is recipient of many national and international awards. Bertuzzi is a thoughtful leader in science, a fellow of the prestigious Aspen Institute and a member of the Cosmos Club. In 2020, the President of the Italian Republic bestowed upon Bertuzzi the title of Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy, one of the highest honors in the Italian Republic.

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.

Vaughn Cooper, Ph.D., 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. At MSU, Vaughn studied the evolution of specialization in the long-term evolution experiment of E. coli populations.

Cooper 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. Cooper was an 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.

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.

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.

Vincent Young, Ph.D., is the William Henry Fitzbutler Collegiate Professor in Internal Medicine/Infectious Diseases Division and Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Michigan Medical School. He received his undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985 and received his M.D. and Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from Stanford University in 1992. He completed clinical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital. After an initial faculty position at Michigan State University, he joined the University of Michigan in 2007.

Young has a long-standing interest in the pathogenesis of bacterial infections of the gastrointestinal tract and the role of the normal microbiota in human health and disease. As part of the NIH Human Microbiome Project, Young led a team that studied the role of the microbiome in inflammatory bowel disease. Current research in the Young Lab includes a "team science" effort to understand the pathogenesis Clostridium difficile infection by an integrated approach combining clinical research, bacterial genomics, microbial ecology and immunology/host response projects.

Young also is leading a group of investigators that is developing the use of stem cell-derived intestinal organoids as a novel alternative model system for the study of enteric disease agents.

Dr. Lindsey Burbank is a research scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service at the San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center in Parlier, California. Her current research program addresses detection, management and basic biology of plant-pathogenic bacteria in perennial specialty crops, with a primary focus on Xylella fastidiosa in grapevine and tree crop hosts.

She received her bachelor's degree in pathobiology from the University of Connecticut and her Ph.D. in plant pathology and microbiology from the University of California, Riverside.

Burbank has pursued research that uses molecular biology to understand fundamental aspects of bacterium-host interactions in the context of plant disease. This work includes investigation of bacterial stress responses, virulence mechanisms and host interactions. She also takes a particular interest in working with students in California's central valley to highlight the scientific side of agriculture and to develop our next generation of science professionals and leaders.

Paul Brown, Ph.D., is a tenured professor of molecular biology at the University of the West Indies and has been studying infectious diseases for more than 30 years. He is involved in academic advising and mentorship, both locally and internationally.

As an infectious disease investigator, Brown's contributions to science have included primary and secondary data analyses of clinical and post-mortem leptospirosis; risk analysis and role of socio-economic factors in transmission; effects of genetic and climate/environmental factors on disease incidence and virulence and cultural and molecular aspects of antimicrobial resistance and pathogenesis. His research has enhanced research capacity and fostered collaboration in molecular ecological investigation of infectious diseases in the Caribbean.

Brown has served as Country Liaison for Jamaica (2008-2010); ASM Ambassador for Central America and the Caribbean Basin (2010-2012); ASM Ambassador to Jamaica (2012-2017); Chair, Inaugural Ambassador Leadership Circle (2014-2016); Chair, Evaluation Committee for Country Ambassadors (2014-2015); Member, Membership Board Task Force (2014-2015); Member, International Board (2015-2016) and Member, Council on Microbial Sciences (2017-present and Inaugural Vice-Chair). He previously served as Council Member of the International Society for Infectious Diseases (2012-2020) and was a Fulbright Fellow in 2010.

Brian Conlon, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the department of microbiology & immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Amy Mathers, M.D., D(ABMM), is an associate professor of medicine and pathology at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. She received her B.S. in cellular and molecular biology from Humbolt State University and her M.D. from the Loyola Stritch School of Medicine. She then did an infectious disease fellowship and microbiology training at the University of Virginia.

Mathers' research focuses on the urgent problem of carbapenem resistance in Enterobacteriaceae. She has been evaluating detection methods in clinical microbiology and molecular transmission of carbapenemase genes for the last 12 years, with a focus on the hospital environment. Molecular characterization has included analysis of mobile resistance mechanisms with evaluation of plasmid evolution and mobility across species with next generation sequencing paired with more traditional techniques. Recently, Mathers has investigated the role that the hospital environment can play in evolution and dissemination of carbapenemase genes.

Shannon McQuaig Ulrich, Ph.D., is a full professor at St. Petersburg College in Clearwater, Fla.

Ulrich earned her B.S. in microbiology and cell science from the University of Florida in 2003. During her time as an undergraduate, she worked in an environmental microbiology laboratory, and her passion for water-quality microbiology was cultivated. She earned her M.S. in microbiology and cell science in 2005. She then attended the University of South Florida, where she developed a real-time PCR assay to detect human polyomaviruses in environmental waters as an indication of microbial water quality. In 2009, Ulrich earned her Ph.D. in biology with a concentration in environmental and ecological microbiology from the University of South Florida.

After graduation, Ulrich joined the University of South Florida as a visiting instructor teaching cell biology and biology. In 2010, she accepted a position at St. Petersburg College, teaching a variety of courses, including biology, microbiology, genetics, immunology, molecular biology and undergraduate research.

Ulrich has published 10 peer-reviewed articles and a book chapter and continues her research interests working with undergraduate students.

Michelle Dziejman, Ph.D., earned her B.S. in biology: microbiology from the University of Rochester and her Ph.D. in microbiology and molecular genetics from the University of Pennsylvania. A series of fortunate events allowed her to conduct her thesis work at Harvard Medical School, where she first began working with Vibrio cholerae. Interested in the (at that time emerging) field of host-pathogen interactions, a postdoctoral fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital facilitated an immersive experience in molecular immunology.

Developing genomics-based projects during a return to Harvard Medical School laid the groundwork for a faculty position and full-circle return to Rochester, N.Y. Dziejman is currently an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, where her laboratory studies the pathogenic mechanisms of type III secretion system-positive V. cholerae strains. She also serves as director for the microbiology M.S. program and course director for "Mechanisms of Microbial Pathogenesis."

Patricia Simner, Ph.D., D(ABMM), is an associate professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Director of the Medical Bacteriology and Infectious Disease Sequencing Laboratories at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Her research has focused on understanding the epidemiology and molecular mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance of gram-negative bacteria, in particular those harboring β-lactamase enzymes. Simner is interested in novel diagnostic tools for infectious diseases and is actively involved in developing metagenomic next-generation sequencing as a diagnostic tool.

Simner is a voting member on the Subcommittee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing for the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. She is the Early Career At-Large Representative for the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Council on Microbial Science, a member of the College of American Pathologist Microbiology Committee and an Editor for the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

Diana L. Vullo, Ph.D., earned her degree in chemistry and her Ph.D. in biological chemistry-industrial microbiology, both at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1999, she was involved with 8 colleagues in the foundation of the Environmental Chemistry Area of the recently created Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento. Since then, she has been associate professor of the institution and independent researcher of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council-Argentina.

Vullo's research projects are focused on environmental biotechnology to develop innovative and sustainable strategies mediated by native microorganisms to solve problems associated with productive processes in urban and periurban areas. The studies are aimed at microbe-metal interactions for the design of innovative biotreatments of electroplating wastewaters and the development of biofertilizers formulated with indigenous plant growth-promoting bacteria and bacteriogenic metal nanoparticles applicable in the restoration of horticultural soils as substitutes for agrochemicals.

Vullo was a member of the Executive Board of the Argentinean Society for General Microbiology (2014-2018) and Co-Founder of Argentinean Society for Environmental Science and Technology. Related to ASM, she served as Ambassador to Argentina (2012-2017), chair and past chair, Ambassador Leadership Circle (2017-2019) and as mentor in the Leadership Program for International Educators (2013-2017).

Diana Elizabeth Waturangi, Ph.D., is a professor in microbiology, with research interest emphasis in food microbiology, at Atma Jaya Catholic University in Jakarta, Indonesia. She was appointed as the ASM Country Ambassador for Indonesia in 2016.

During her appointment as ambassador, Waturangi has initiated a collaboration with 14 universities throughout Indonesia to organize a series of seminars and workshops focused on teaching microbiology, science communication and scientific writing. She also led a collaborative project with ASM Country Ambassadors from the Philippines, El Salvador and Argentina to organize similar workshops and webinars. In 2018, Waturangi collaborated with ASM to display the Smithsonian's "Outbreak" exhibit at her institution.

After Maria Mercedes Zambrano, Ph.D., completed her doctorate in microbiology in the U.S., she returned to her country, Colombia, and has worked for more than 25 years at the research center she co-founded, Corporación Corpogen. Her research has evolved from studying stationary phase E. coli and microbial pathogen growth and survival to analyzing environmental microbes and community adaptations.

As Scientific Director and Researcher at Corpogen, Zambrano has trained many scientists and worked closely with researchers worldwide, establishing collaborations to focus on challenges in research and innovation. More recently, she has worked as Editor at eLife and mBio and collaborated closely with scientists of diverse backgrounds through participation in global research consortia and networks, such as the DSI scientific network, which aims to provide a voice to scientists in the ongoing discussions regarding global policies on use of digital sequence information.

Renée M. Tsolis, Ph.D., is a professor of medical microbiology at the University of California, Davis. She is Chair of the UC Davis Microbiology Graduate Program.

Tsolis received her Diplom in Microbiology from Eberhard Karls-Universität Tübingen in Germany and her Ph.D. in medical microbiology from Oregon Health & Science University. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and serves on the editorial boards of Infection and Immunity and PLOS Pathogens. Her research interests encompass the interactions of intracellular bacterial pathogens, particularly Brucella and Salmonella spp. with the innate immune system.

Linoj Samuel, Ph.D., D(A.B.M.M.) is the Division Head for Clinical Microbiology for Henry Ford Health. In this role, he provides leadership and oversight of infectious disease diagnostics for an integrated health care network spread across five hospitals and 30+ medical centers in southeast Michigan. 

Samuel received his Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from the University of Arizona, where he focused on the factors impacting the intracellular survival of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. He then completed the medical microbiology and public health fellowship at the University of Rochester, N.Y. He is currently Chair of the American Society for Microbiology Clinical and Public Health Microbiology Committee (CPHMC).

Samuel's research is primarily focused on novel rapid methods for diagnostics and susceptibility testing. This includes inter-disciplinary work on diagnostic stewardship to improve cost effective care and test utilization for optimal patient outcomes. He has also published on laboratory accreditation, quality improvement and metrics to identify errors in clinical microbiology laboratories and reduce the potential for patient harm. Samuel's focus also includes a body of work on the role of point-of-care testing in clinical microbiology laboratories.   

Samuel is currently Co-Chair of the Education Committee for the Pan American Society for Clinical Virology and most recently served as the Chair of the American Society for Microbiology Committee for Postgraduate Educational Programs (CPEP). 

 

Tara C. Smith, Ph.D., is a professor of epidemiology at the Kent State University College of Public Health. She spent 9 years in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Iowa College of Public Health, where she directed the College’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and attained the rank of associate professor with tenure. She completed post-doctoral training in molecular epidemiology at the University of Michigan and obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Toledo and her B.S. in biology from Yale University.

Smith’s research generally focuses on zoonotic infections. She was the first to identify livestock-associated strains of MRSA in the United States and has pioneered the investigation of this organism in the U.S. She has presented her research at numerous national and international events. She has also published work on vaccine hesitancy, science communication and COVID-19.

Smith is active in science communication and outreach. She maintained a science blog for 11 years and has written books on Group A Streptococcus, Group B Streptococcus, and Ebola. She published her second book on Ebola, "Ebola's Message," with MIT Press in 2016. She writes about infectious disease for many outlets and is a member of the Zombie Research Society’s advisory board.

Shelley M. Payne, Ph.D., AAM, is professor of Molecular Biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, where she holds the Marie Betzner Morrow Centennial Chair in Microbiology. She is the director of the John Ring LaMontagne Center for Infectious Disease.

Payne received her Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Graduate School and was a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests focus on the adaptations of bacterial pathogens, particularly Vibrio cholerae and Shigella spp., to the host environment. She has served as an Editor for Infection and Immunity and is on the editorial boards of several journals.

Payne has been involved in undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral education initiatives, and she previously chaired the ASM Graduate and Postdoctoral Education Committee. She is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor and a Minnie Stevens Piper Professor. She is the recipient of the ASM Graduate Teaching Award, the University of Texas Regents Teaching Award and the Civitatis Award for service to the University. Payne has been active in support of increasing diversity in science and in academia.

Patrick Schloss, Ph.D., is a microbial ecologist interested in understanding the stability of the gut community and how this stability affects colonization resistance and health. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, where he focused on the microbial community dynamics in engineered ecosystems. His postdoctoral training was done at the University of Wisconsin in the laboratory of Dr. Jo Handelsman, where he began to develop computational tools to analyze microbial community data being generated in metagenomic projects.

After being on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts for 3 years, he has spent the last 9 years as an assistant, associate and now full professor at the University of Michigan; he is the Frederick G. Novy Collegiate Professor of Microbiome Research.

His research group studies community stability in humans and mouse models using next generation sequencing technologies and computational biology to better understand Clostridium difficile infections and the progression of colorectal cancer. To facilitate these studies, Schloss invests considerable effort in developing bioinformatics tools to analyze 16S rRNA gene sequence data. He has also been instrumental in developing instructional materials to help microbiologists engage in research practices that foster greater reproducibility. Schloss is a past Editor of Applied and Environmental Microbiology and is the Chair of the ASM Journals Board.

Yvette S. McCarter, Ph.D., D(ABMM), is a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine-Jacksonville and the Director of Clinical Microbiology at University of Florida Health Jacksonville in Jacksonville, Fla. She received her doctorate in clinical microbiology from the Medical College of Virginia and completed postdoctoral fellowship training in public jealth and medical microbiology at Hartford Hospital under the direction of Raymond Bartlett, M.D. McCarter is a Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Microbiology.  

McCarter is a member of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) and is a fellow of the Association of Clinical Scientists. She is currently a Co-Director for the First Coast Infectious Disease/Clinical Microbiology Symposium and Co-Chair of the American Society for Microbiology Microbe Program Committee. She is the Microbiology Associate Editor for Lab Medicine and currently serves on the ASCP LabQ Editorial Board. McCarter has previously served as the Chair of the American Board of Medical Microbiology and has been a member of the Laboratory Standards Development Technical Advisory Panel of The Joint Commission, the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Florida Board of Clinical Laboratory Personnel. She also serves on the editorial board of several scholarly journals and is an ad hoc reviewer for several others. 

McCarter’s research interests include utilization controls in the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory, cost-effective laboratory medicine and the evaluation of new diagnostic tests and antimicrobials.

Dr. Peggy Cotter is a professor in microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is a Past President of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM, 2017 to 2018). She earned a B.A. in Microbiology and Psychobiology and a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Cotter established her own lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2001 and moved to University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2009.

Dr. Cotter has served various roles within ASM, was an editor for Molecular Microbiology from 2006 to 2011, and is currently Chair of the National Institutes of Health Prokaryotic Cell and Molecular Biology Study Section. Dr. Cotter also serves as a leader for ASM’s Manuscript Writing and Publishing for Scientists webinar series. Lastly, she also was one of the distinguished Plenary Speakers for ASMCUE 2019. 

Stacey Schultz-Cherry, Ph.D., is a full member (professor) in the Department of Infectious Diseases at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., where she serves as the Deputy Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Influenza Collaborating Center, Co-Director for the NIAID-funded Center for Excellence in Influenza Research and Surveillance (CEIRS) and Co-Director for the NIAID-funded Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Center (CIVIC).

She received her Ph.D. in molecular and cellular pathology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and did postdoctoral training in influenza virology at the University of Wisconsin. Before joining the faculty at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in 2009, she was a tenured associate professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Schultz-Cherry is recognized internationally for her studies on the pathogenesis influenza and enteric viruses in high-risk populations and influenza at the animal-human interface. She is the author and co-author of more than 190 research articles, reviews and book chapters, is the past President of the American Society for Virology, and the current Chair of the Public and Scientific Affairs Committee for ASM.

Devin M. Drown, Ph.D., is associate professor of biology and faculty director of the Institute of Arctic Biology Genomics Core at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Fairbanks, Alaska. Drown received his bachelor’s degree from Grinnell College and a Ph.D. at Washington State University. He conducted postdoctoral research in the evolutionary genetics of host-symbiont interactions at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
 
The Drown lab investigates a number of diverse topics including host-microbe interactions and emerging pathogens. His lab is interested in the impacts of climate change on the Arctic and sub-Arctic ecosystems, particularly plant-microbe interactions within the boreal forest. The lab is characterizing changes in the soil resistome to better understand antibiotic resistance as a result of thawing permafrost. His lab also works on emerging veterinary pathogens, including African Swine Fever Virus. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, his lab supports efforts to track SARS-CoV-2 variants in Alaska. The Drown lab has been employing nanopore sequencing for many research projects.
 
Drown has a passion for engaging undergraduate students in research. Drown is an active member of the leadership for the Alaska Branch of ASM and works with the Alaska INBRE program building biomedical research capacity within Alaska.

Jeffrey (Jeff) Newman, Ph.D. is a professor of biology at Lycoming College, a small liberal arts school offering bachelor’s degrees in Williamsport, Pa.  

Newman received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from Marquette University and conducted postdoctoral research at the University Kentucky before beginning at Lycoming in 1995. His primary teaching responsibilities are microbiology, introduction to biology I, public health, genome analysis and research methods. The microbiology course includes a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) in which students identify unknown bacterial isolates from a local creek using traditional methods as well as Biolog GenIII plates for medium throughput phenotyping and 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. These isolates often are sufficiently different from previously named organisms to merit description as novel species.

Newman’s research laboratory has focused on the genomic and phenotypic characterization of these novel species candidates and comparison to the closest relatives. Goals of the research are the publication and naming of these novel species, determining genomic explanations for observed phenotypic differences and identifying the functions of hypothetical proteins encoded within their genomes. He also has served as an editor for the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM) and directed Lycoming College’s Covid testing program during the pandemic.

Shazia Tabassum Hakim, Ph.D., SCCM(MLS), is a professor of Biomedical Sciences & Microbiology at Diné College, Ariz. (first tribally-owned college of North America in Navajo Nation). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Karachi, Pakistan, trained in Dr. Raj Karim’s lab at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and Dr. Rob Striker’s lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a Registered Specialist Microbiologist with the Canadian College of Microbiologists. Hakim researched HCV antivirals using bovine viral diarrhea virus as surrogate model, along with genotyping and gene sequencing of HBV and HCV viruses, primate microRNAs in lentiviruses, retro elements and human endogenous retroviruses.

Before joining Diné College in 2018, she was Program Director of Allied Health Sciences, Canadian Academy of Health Professionals, Health Science Instructor at Oxford College, Ontario, Canada and Microbiology Professor, Chairperson and Dean of Sciences & Research at Jinnah University for Women, Karachi, Pakistan. Her research interest centers on infectious diseases: their sero-prevalence, transmission, prevention, drug design and evaluation of vaccines.

Hakim has been associated with ASM since 1995, first as a student, then an outreach member and now a contributing member. She joined ASM's Arizona/Nevada chapter in 2018. Her experience & qualifications blend working in both advanced and resource-limited settings.

Lisa Cuchara, Ph.D., is a professor at Quinnipiac University (QU), Conn. She has several research interests in the field of infectious diseases: vaccine hesitancy, vaccine-preventable diseases, the presence of antibiotic resistance genes in water, soil & food, the existence of antibiotic resistant bacteria on fomites in both the public & healthcare venues, MRSA, the colonization of bacterial species in healthy individuals, nosocomial infections, emerging diseases caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria and commensals & opportunistic bacteria. She has had over 160 QU undergraduate and grad students involved in research projects, and they have presented many research posters at scientific conferences.

She believes that the love of learning and "the big picture" are more important than just filling a student’s head with facts that are only retained until the exam takes place. Hence her teaching philosophy: "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." She believes that while everyone talks about IQ (and now EQ), CQ (curiosity quotient) and PQ (passion quotient) are equally important. Her philosophy is that learning is an active process involving an intellectual presence. She is passionate about creating "citizen scientists," incorporating it into all of her classes.

Kimberlee Musser, Ph.D., is the Clinical Director for the New York State Department of Health Wadsworth Center, David Axelrod Institute and the Chief of Bacterial Disease overseeing the bacteriology and mycobacteriology testing programs. She has overseen bacterial public health reference testing, surveillance and outbreak investigations for more than 20 years. Musser received a B.A. in Biology from Clark University, followed by a Ph.D. in Biomedical Science from Albany Medical College and a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Emerging Infectious Diseases postdoctoral fellowship hosted at the Wadsworth Center. 

Musser is an author on >70 manuscripts and 4 book chapters, and has given numerous invited seminars at local, national and international meetings. She has also mentored > 30 students and training fellows. Her laboratory has developed and validated dozens of laboratory-developed tests, including real-time PCR assays, MALDI-TOF (mass spectroscopy), pyrosequencing and, most recently, whole-genome sequencing. 

Dr. Joe Zackular is an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where he studied the role of the gut microbiota in colorectal cancer in the laboratory of Dr. Patrick Schloss. He joined the laboratory of Dr. Eric Skaar at Vanderbilt University Medical Center for his postdoctoral fellowship, where he studied the role of dietary metals and nutritional immunity in Clostridium difficile infection. In August of 2018, he started his laboratory in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The Zackular laboratory is focused on understanding how interactions between the host, gut microbiota and pathogenic microbes impact human health and disease. The labs recent efforts center on understanding how the important nosocomial pathogen, C. difficile, interacts with resident gut microbiota during infection and how interspecies cross-talk impacts growth, behavior and virulence of this pathogen. Research in the Zackular lab draws from a number of diverse fields including microbial ecology, bacterial pathogenesis, biochemistry, host-pathogen interactions and microbiota research.
 

Dr. Terri Ellis is a medical microbiologist and associate professor of biology at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Fla.

She received her bachelor’s degree from Duke University and her Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of California Davis under the mentorship of Blaine Beaman, investigating innate immune responses to Nocardia asteroides. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the NIH/NIEHS and Duke University where she studied outer membrane vesicles with Dr. Meta Kuehn.

The Ellis lab investigates how modifications to the outer surface components of Klebsiella pneumoniae, such as outer membrane vesicles, porins and polysaccharide capsule, contribute to virulence and antibiotic resistance. The Ellis lab utilizes a range of proteomic, biochemical, cell biology, genetic and immunology based techniques to investigate how small changes to the outer surface of these bacteria trigger larger downstream alterations in virulence. Incorporated into all investigations is student training.

Dr. Ellis has a particular interest in science pedagogy, student mentorship and undergraduate research opportunities. She has been a participant in both the the NSF CREATE and FIRST IV initiatives to improve science teaching and incorporate primary literature into undergraduate coursework. She is an active member of the leadership for the Florida Branch of ASM.

Michael Lieberman has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Chicago, is a Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Laboratory Immunology (ABLMI) and a licensed Clinical Laboratory Director (state of Hawaii). He has done both research and clinical laboratory work for over 50 years and served as a U.S. Army Medical Service Corps officer for 20 years, where he was assigned to several military hospitals, before retiring in 1996.  

After retirement from the Army, Dr. Lieberman was employed as a research scientist at Hawaii Biotech, Inc. in Aiea, Hawaii, working on the development of vaccines against West Nile and dengue viruses. In 2007, he consulted for another local biotech company, as well as served as laboratory director for Aloha Toxicology Lab in Honolulu, until retiring yet again at the end of 2015.  

Currently, he is employed as an immunologist in the Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology and as laboratory director of the Tropical Medicine Clinical Laboratory in the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii. He has been a member of ASM for 49 years, has attended many national annual meetings and was a participant in round tables and a convener of a symposium. He has also been a member of ASM’s Hawaii Branch for many years, where he is active in local branch meetings and has served as Secretary, Treasurer and Councilor.

Nicholas Moore, Ph.D., D(ABMM), MLS(ASCP), is the Associate Director of the Clinical Microbiology and Molecular Infectious Diseases Laboratories at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. He also serves as the director of the BSL-3 biocontainment laboratory. 

Moore completed his B.S. degree at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. Following his undergraduate studies, he completed his M.S. at Rush University and became a certified medical laboratory scientist. He also earned his Ph.D. from Rush University where he studied the epidemiology of blaKPC-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae and chlorhexidine gluconate resistance among patients in long-term care settings under the direction of Mary Hayden, M.D. 

His research focuses on the epidemiology of multiple drug-resistant organisms, leveraging new technology to improve the diagnostic process, and the use of advanced molecular diagnostics to inform infection control decision-making related to nosocomial outbreaks.

Becky Sparks-Thissen's term as a branch councilor runs through 2025.

 

 

 

Todd Kelson, Ph.D., graduated with his B.S. in microbiology from Brigham Young University and went on to earn an M.S. in plant genetics from Iowa State University and a Ph.D. in human genetics from the Medical College of Virginia. Kelson completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado Mental Retardation Research Center. He has been an Instructor in the Biology Department at Brigham Young University—Idaho since 1998. 

In 2013, Kelson became involved in antibiotic discovery as a research tool to inspire students to persist in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM), while addressing a global issue of antimicrobial resistance. He joined the Tiny Earth Network (headquartered at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery) to promote undergraduate independent research in antimicrobial discovery in soil. His research interests lie in STEM education and in antibiotic discovery from bacteria in soil.

Ryan Doster, M.D., Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. He received his B.A. in Biology from Hanover College (Hanover, Ind.) and his M.D. from Indiana University. Following a combined residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at Indiana University, he completed a clinical fellowship in infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. During his clinical fellowship, Doster enrolled in the Physician Scientist Doctoral Program where he completed a Ph.D. in Microbe-Host Interactions.
 
His research interests include clinical infectious diseases, microbial pathogenesis with a focus on host-bacterial interactions and the influence of host metabolic state on bacterial pathogenesis. Doster’s research program focuses on mechanisms by which bacterial pathogens cause infections during pregnancy that lead to adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preterm birth and neonatal sepsis. His lab uses Group B Streptococcus as a model organism to understand how bacteria colonize epithelial borders within the female reproductive tract and alter host innate immune responses to cause ascending infection. He is interested in understanding how changes in host metabolic diseases, such as diabetes mellitus, might alter host-pathogen interactions and promote infectious outcomes.
 

Silvia Piñeiro received her Ph.D. from the University of Bahia Blanca, Argentina, and has held positions as a post-doctoral research associate, assistant professor, professor and senior scientific associate, at the University of Iowa, University of Buenos Aires, University of Salvador, and BioSidus, and University of Maryland. Since 2009, she holds a faculty visiting scientist position at the School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University. She is a senior regulatory review scientist in the area of microbial food safety, Division of Human Food Safety, CVM/FDA.  

Much of the work in Dr. Piñeiro’s division is on Agency policy development and national/international work on microbial resistance and microbiome issues. Her primary role is reviewing submissions towards the drug approval of new animal drugs from the perspective of the human intestinal microbiome (FDA/GFI#159) and antimicrobial resistance (FDA/GFI#152); also collaborates on research projects addressing regulatory questions and data gaps on antimicrobial resistance and the impact of residues on human intestinal microbiome.

Additionally, she has over 30 peer-reviewed research manuscripts, a book chapter, two patents, over 50 research abstracts, over 10 regulatory abstracts and 20 special invitations as speaker.  Since 2016, she has been appointed scientific expert member of the FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA).

Laura K. Harris, Ph.D., is an accomplished medical biologist and award-winning educator with over 20 years of diverse experience with expertise in infectious disease, immunology, neurology, astrobiology and oncology.

She earned her Ph.D. in biomedical informatics from Rutgers, State University of New Jersey (2020), and 2 M.S. degrees—cell and molecular biology (2009) and microbiology (2003)—after her B.S. in microbiology (2000) from Michigan State University (MSU). Harris started her career in the industry working as a research associate and medical writer at various stages throughout the pre-clinical and clinical drug development process in and alongside pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer. She then settled into academia where she rose to assistant professor/science laboratory coordinator at Davenport University before becoming director of training for the Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research at MSU.

While in academia, Harris discovered her passion for bioinformatics research and established Harris Interdisciplinary Research specializing in next-generation sequencing -omics data meta-analysis, genome annotation improvement and protein modeling. She currently maintains adjunct professor positions at several institutions while providing bioinformatics research and medical writing services worldwide. 

Harris has received several honors for her leadership excellence, including LeadLikeAWoman by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce (2019) and honorary membership to the National Society of Leadership and Success, Sigma Alpha Pi (2018).

Harris is inspired daily by her husband and their 2 daughters. In her free time, she likes to train for half-marathons and sprint triathlons, help her daughters with extra-curricular school science projects and play video games.

Melanie Mormile currently serves as the Associate Dean for Research and External Relations for the College of Arts, Sciences and Business at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). She is also a professor of biological sciences. She began her career at Missouri S&T in 1999 as an assistant professor. Prior to joining S&T, she did postdoctoral work for Drs. Jim Fredrickson and Brent Peyton at the Pacific Northwest National Lab. She holds a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Oklahoma.

At Missouri S&T, Mormile has published on many topics in environmental microbiology that span the fate of antibiotics in pig waste lagoons, identifying new species of halophilic bacteria, to possible industrial uses of halophiles. She holds 2 patents on biohydrogen production from cellulosic materials and 1 on the production of propanediol from waste glycerol, all under alkaline and saline conditions. In addition, Mormile has served as the main faculty advisor for the Mars Rover Design Team (MRDT) of Missouri S&T since its inception in 2012. Along with research, administration and advising MRDT, she also teaches courses that range from the Introduction to Biological Sciences (freshmen) to Bioremediation (graduate level).

Travis Bourret's term as a branch councilor runs through 2023.

Wendy Szymczak, Ph.D., D(ABMM), MLS(ASCP), is Director of Clinical Microbiology at Montefiore Medical Center and an associate professor in the Department of Pathology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry and Microbiology at the University of Cincinnati and completed post-doctoral training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Szymczak is an editor for ASM's Microbiology Spectrum and the councilor for the New York City branch of the American Society for Microbiology. Her current research interests include developing whole genome sequencing pipelines for detecting pathogens, predicting antimicrobial resistance and epidemiologic surveillance.

Dr. Erin Field is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at East Carolina University (ECU). She received her Ph.D. in Microbiology at Montana State University in 2011 and held postdoctoral researcher positions at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and the University of Delaware before arriving in North Carolina in 2016. Her lab’s research primarily focuses on metal-microbe interactions in coastal environments and how these interactions affect larger processes, including biocorrosion of infrastructure and shipwrecks, contaminant mobility and metal cycling in the environment. She has published over 20 articles in this research area. Recently her lab’s work on the Pappy's Lane Shipwreck was featured on NPR’s Science Friday and in multiple online magazines, such as Popular Science and The Scientist. Field has a passion for student education and mentoring and in 2019, she was chosen as an American Society for Microbiology Undergraduate Research Fellow Mentor. Field currently teaches courses in Microbiology, Microbial Biotechnology and Advanced Sequencing Techniques at ECU, which incorporate course-based undergraduate research (CUREs).
 

Torey Looft, Ph.D., is a research microbiologist in the Food Safety Enteric Pathogens Research Unit at the USDA-National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa. Looft completed his B.S. and M.S. at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, and his Ph.D. at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, where he studied swine microbiomes and the effects of antibiotic feed additives on intestinal microbial populations.

He currently oversees a research program focused on defining the ecology of antibiotic resistance genes in the poultry microbiome, succession of the avian microbiota after hatch and interactions between the microbiome and Salmonella and Campylobacter. In addition, Looft participates in education efforts as adjunct assistant professor in the Veterinary Microbiology Department at Iowa State University. Through these efforts, Looft seeks to improve antibiotic stewardship by modulating intestinal microbiomes to improve food safety and animal health.

Roger S. Greenwell Jr., Ph.D., is an associate professor in the biology department at Worcester State University in Worcester, Mass.  He serves as co-coordinator of the undergraduate biotechnology program and graduate program coordinator for the M.S. in biotechnology program, and he also serves as the life sciences industry liaison for the university.

Roger grew up in Kentucky and earned his B.S. in recombinant genetics and chemistry from Western Kentucky University. He received his Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010, under the mentorship of Dr. Timothy Donohue. He joined the laboratory of Dr. Joanne Willey as a postdoctoral researcher at Hofstra University, studying the developmental regulation of Streptomyces coelicolor. After 2 years as a postdoc, Roger became a faculty member at Hofstra University before joining the faculty at Worcester State University in 2014. Roger joined the Northeast Branch of ASM and has served as a local councilor since 2016.

The Greenwell laboratory continues to focus on S. coelicolor development, stress responses and gene regulation. He is also studying interspecies microbial interactions between bacteria and fungi, biofilm formation by environmental Pseudomonas species, trematode parasites infecting fish, soil microbiomes and antibiotic discovery and development.  

Hamida Nusrat, Ph.D., P.H.M.(CDPH), S.M. (ASCP)CM, holds dual faculty positions in the post-baccalaureate program at UC Berkeley, as well as in the CLS program at San Francisco State University. Nusrat received an M.S./Ph.D. degree in clinical microbiology and immunology from the University of Karachi, Pakistan and holds a certification in Public Health Microbiology from the California Department of Public Health and Specialist Microbiologist License from American Society of Clinical Pathology (ASCP). 
 
Nusrat acts as a liaison with county and state departments and agencies, and functions as LabAspire Program Coordinator of the state-wide PH lab network to sustain laboratory and personnel regulatory requirements for certifying PH Lab Directors. She is passionate about training students in various disciplines of clinical and public health microbiology on new methodologies of innovative diagnostic assays and received the ASM Peggy Cotter Travel Award in 2019.

Molly A. Matty, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the department of biology at the in Portland, Oregon. She earned her Ph.D. from Duke University, where she worked with Dr. David Tobin to explore host-directed therapies for mycobacterial infections using zebrafish as a model system. 

She performed her postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute, where she transitioned to the invertebrate model, C. elegans. In addition to switching model systems, she switched research fields from infectious disease biology and innate immune interactions to host-microbiome interactions.

While at the Salk Institute, Matty became interested in how gut states—particularly those from the microbiome—impacted animal behavior. Her postdoctoral work helped characterize the signaling pathways involved in the gut-brain axis during C. elegans decision-making processes. Her work was funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, and her transition to behavioral science was supported by a summer at the Marine Biological Laboratory Woods Hole course "Neural Systems and Behavior."

While a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher, she was passionately involved in outreach and educational programming within, and beyond, her community and continues to prioritize mentorship and support for students around the world. 

Matty started at the University of Portland, a primarily undergraduate institution, in 2022. She teaches genetics and biology courses while running a small lab of undergraduates. The Matty Lab uses C. elegans as a model system to understand how environmental microbes impact gut-brain signaling. Her research is at the intersections of genetics, microbiology and behavioral neuroscience and allows student-researchers to find their passions within these diverse fields. 

Jennifer Bennett, Ph.D., graduated with a B.S. in biology and chemistry from La Roche College, a M.S. in biological sciences and a Ph.D. in biological sciences (concentration in microbial genetics/cell and molecular biology) from Duquesne University. She then performed a teaching post-doctoral fellowship at Juniata College, where she was the von Liebig Scholar of Biology.

Bennett is currently professor and Chair of the Department of Biology & Earth Science at Otterbein University, where she maintains an interest in innovative teaching strategies, especially in the area of integrating scientific research into the undergraduate curriculum. Her research focuses on the identification and characterization of new genes involved in bacterial development and antibiotic production.

Jose Perez Jimenez's term as a branch councilor runs through 2024.

 

 

 

Cervantes obtained his M.D. degree from Cayetano Heredia University in Peru. He received research training in tropical medicine in Japan and conducted dengue surveillance in the Amazon, before pursuing a doctorate in biomedical sciences in Kagoshima University, Faculty of Medicine in Japan.

Cervantes has worked on immunology and infectious diseases, focusing on the innate immune aspects of phagocytes as a postdoctoral fellow in Japan and later in UConn Health and Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. His interests include antimicrobial peptides and host-pathogen interactions in the field of tuberculosis, leprosy and Lyme disease. Cervantes is an expert on the human lung microbiome in tuberculosis and how mucosa-associated microbiota can confer risk for the development of precancerous lesions in the colon. Cervantes also works on inflammatory processes occurring in microglia triggered by bacterial-derived peptides in the context of multiple sclerosis. Cervantes is passionate about translating his findings and applying his knowledge to public health problems like leprosy, tuberculosis, tick-borne diseases and infectious diseases education.

Cervantes is an advocate for scientific integration into medical education. Cervantes believes that the assimilation of basic science and understanding of new technologies is paramount to how medical professionals can base clinical reasoning. When learners understand how basic science knowledge informs clinical practice, their confidence on foundational scientific underpinnings transcends assumptions and reliance on learners’ intuitively practicing and advancing medicine on evidence-based foundations of science. The more that future health professionals can achieve excellence in clinical decision making, the better the future of the health care systems will be to promote patients’ health and quality of life.

Cervantes serves on the editorial board for renowned journals such as Frontiers in Immunology, Frontiers in Public Health, Clinical Microbiology Reviews, PLoS ONE as well as a reviewer for a long list of scientific and medical education journals. Cervantes is also the Editor in Chief for Clinical Infection and Immunity.

Cervantes served for 2 consecutive terms as the president for the American Society for Microbiology Rio Grande Branch, and now he is a Council on Microbial Sciences (COMS) representative and a member of the ASM Future Leaders Mentoring Fellowship (FLMF) program. Cervantes is the Southern Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of Medical Research (AFMR). Cervantes is the ASTMH Scientific Program Committee, Pneumonia, Respiratory Infections and Tuberculosis Chair, as well as member of the ASTMH Travel Award Committee.

Dan Wall is a professor in the Molecular Biology Department at the University of Wyoming. He received his bachelor’s degree in biology from the Sonoma State University, his doctoral degree from the University of Utah, and he conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Prior to his current position he started in 2007, Wall worked on antibiotic drug discovery at San Diego biotechnology companies for eight years. Wall has played an active leadership role in the Rocky Mountain Branch of ASM for more than 10 years, including serving as Branch President.

Research in the Wall Lab focuses on how myxobacteria socially interact and transition to multicellularity by an aggregation strategy. Specifically, his group studies molecular mechanisms of kin recognition, social cooperation and how myxobacteria discriminate against non-kin cells.

Jennifer T. Grier, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of immunology at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, where she is the director of pre-clinical immunology course and teaches clinical virology to second-year medical students.
 
Grier received her Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology, with an emphasis on microbiology, virology and parasitology, from the University of Pennsylvania with a Med-into-Grad certificate from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She then received an Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA) postdoctoral fellowship to perform research in the department of pathobiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine while teaching undergraduate students at University of Rutgers-Camden and Lincoln University.
 
Grier’s research program is focused on host-pathogen interactions during respiratory infections, particularly how intrinsic immune responses impact susceptibility to secondary infections. She also oversees research programs to study infection susceptibility and vaccine information needs in her local community. Undergraduate and medical student mentorship is a significant emphasis of Grier’s research lab, and she received the Outstanding Undergraduate Mentor Award from the University of South Carolina in 2022.

Dr. Monica C. Gestal completed her Ph.D. in A Coruna, Spain, where she focused on determining the molecular mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in Enterobacteriaceae. Specifically, she investigated the epidemiological and molecular features of the CTX-M beta-lactamases critical for the extended spectrum activity. She then moved to Nottingham, U.K., supported by Fundacion Barrie de la Maza and an Intra-European Marie Curie award, where she examined the mechanisms of quorum sensing. Her project focused on understanding the changes in signaling molecules caused by a small RNA naturally transferred from Pseudomonas aeruginosa to Shinorhizobium meliloti. She also worked on identifying natural compounds that block quorum sensing in P. aeruginosa through suppression of virulence factors. Next, she moved to Ecuador where she worked in the National Reference Laboratory of Antibiotic Resistance and the Zurita&Zurita Laboratories where she continued working on mechanisms of antibiotic resistance. From Ecuador, she moved to the University of Georgia, Athens, where she developed expertise in animal models and immunology, before beginning her own laboratory as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport. As a PI of her laboratory, she seeks to understand the molecular mechanisms by which Bordetella spp., the causative agent of whooping cough, manipulates host immune responses.
 

Tanya Sysoeva, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). She is interested in understanding how bacteria adapt to their changing environments and interact within their ecological niches.

Sysoeva received her Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University, where she studied structural mechanisms of bacterial transcription regulation in the laboratory of Dr. Tracy Nixon. She joined the laboratory of Dr. Briana Burton at Harvard University for her postdoctoral training to study bacterial membrane transport processes using bacterial genetics, biochemistry and structural biology.

As a National Institute of Health (NIH) K12 KURe Scholar in the laboratory of Dr. Lingchong You at Duke University, Sysoeva used molecular biology and bioinformatics to research clinical antibiotic-resistant uropathogens and commensal microbiome of the urinary tract.

The Sysoeva laboratory at UAH focuses on the problem of multidrug-resistant urinary tract infections (UTIs), trying to address this problem (i) by studying natural processes that prevent spread of resistance plasmids and (ii) by characterizing commensal and pathogenic bacteria in human urinary microbiome as an ecological niche. The research goal of her group is to identify how urinary microbiome develops and gets susceptible to uropathogens, and to create novel strategies to prevent and treat antibiotic-resistant UTIs via drug- or microbiome-based interventions.

Zaffar Hussain's term as a branch councilor runs through 2023.

 

 

 

Heidi B. Kaplan, Ph.D., is associate professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at McGovern Medical School, part of UTHealth, Houston. She received her Ph.D. in Microbiology at Cornell with E. Peter Greenberg, studying Vibrio fisheri autoinduction, which became known as quorum signaling. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University with Dale Kaiser studying Myxococcus xanthus development.
 
Kaplan’s research focuses on the complex behavioral responses of bacterial communities to their changing environment. She has a special interest in the cell-cell communication of surface-attached communities, termed biofilms. Specifically, her group examines the physiology, interactions and dynamics orchestrating the developmental programs that control the initiation and dissolution of a variety of model biofilms.
 
Kaplan is excited to represent the Texas ASM Branch as their councilor. Her extensive involvement with the Texas Branch includes serving as President and Secretary. Kaplan has served ASM as chair of the ASM Distinguished Lecturer Committee and as a member of the Career Development Grants for Postdoctoral Women Committee. In addition, she is advisor to the very active Texas Medical Center ASM Graduate Student and Postdoc Chapter. Kaplan also served as chair of the ASM Conferences on Cell-Cell Communication in Bacteria and Prokaryotic Development.  
 

Jeffrey M. Boyd is an associate professor of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
 
He grew up in the mid-west of the United States and received his B.S. in Microbiology, Immunology and Preventative Medicine from Iowa State University in 1999. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Utah State University in 2005. He then was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin from 2005-2009 and University of Iowa during 2009-2010. He has been a faculty member at Rutgers University in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology since 2010. 
 
The Boyd lab studies the physiology of gram-positive bacteria, with a primary focus on the human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus. The group is particularly interested in examining metal ion homeostasis, including determining how iron-sulfur proteins are maturated, the mechanisms by which microbes protect themselves from toxic metal ions and how an intracellular imbalance of metal ions can cause toxicity. The group also studies the physiological changes that occur upon the transitions between respiratory and fermentative growth, including biofilm formation and toxin production. Their penultimate goal is the use the knowledge gained to decease the burden of pathogenic bacteria.
 

Brian D. Badgley, Ph.D., is an associate professor of environmental microbiology in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His group conducts research at the intersection of environmental microbiology with soil and water quality, focusing on 2 broad areas. The 1st area is relationships between microbial community structure and ecological functions such as nutrient cycling. The 2nd area relates to microbial transport and water quality, with a specific focus on the fate and transport of pathogens and fecal indicators at the watershed scale. They strive to develop highly collaborative and interdisciplinary projects, working with a variety of colleagues from ecology, engineering, agriculture, chemistry and public health.

Badgley is an active member of the American Society for Microbiology and recently completed 3 years of service rotating through the presidential officer roles for the Virginia Branch of ASM.
 
Dr. Badgley holds a B.S. degree in zoology from the University of Georgia and an M.S. degree in marine, environmental and estuarine science from the University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. degree in biology from the University of South Florida and completed post-doctoral training at the University of Minnesota.

Benjamin M. Liu, BMBS, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of pathology, pediatrics and microbiology, immunology and tropical medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences and the assistant director of the Microbiology and the Infectious Disease Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at the Children's National Hospital.

Liu’s research has focused on understanding molecular mechanisms of virus-host cell interactions, antiviral innate immunity and novel antiviral development. He is also interested in development and validation of novel molecular tests for laboratory-based diagnosis of infectious diseases.

Liu has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and conference abstracts. He has delivered over 50 invited lectures and presentations on a variety of national and international conferences on clinical/molecular microbiology, virology and infectious diseases diagnostics. He serves as an editor for multiple peer-reviewed scientific journals in molecular sciences, microbiology and virology. He also serves on committees of different professional societies, including the American Society for Virology and the Pan American Society for Clinical Virology. He is the councilor of the Washington, D.C. Branch of ASM.
 

Elaine Haase, Ph.D., began her career working as a clinical microbiologist performing bacteriology, mycology and parasitology assays. She went on to earn a M.S. degree in medical technology studying antibiotic resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains from cystic fibrosis patients. She continued in research, earning a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University at Buffalo (UB), focusing on the P2 porin protein of non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae from patients with otitis media. Through protein isolation by gel chromatography and the production of monoclonal antibodies, she was able to epitope map the P2 protein. She transitioned to the Department of Oral Biology in the School of Dental Medicine at UB, serving as a research scientist and lecturer.

One investigation focused on the identification, transcription and gene regulation of flp fimbriae from the periodontal pathogen Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans. Other research involved proteomic and transcriptomic studies of the interaction of commensal Streptococcus gordonii and its amylase-binding proteins with salivary proteins and other oral microbes. An understanding of the acquisition of these proteins among oral streptococcal strains has been gained through comparative genomics. Currently, she is working on the discovery of bacteriophages in oral microbes and their effect on oral ecology.

Dr. Maria Mojica is a microbiologist at Universidad El Bosque, Bogotá, Colombia. She has an M.S. in Biological Sciences from Universidad de Los Andes (Bogota, Colombia), with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University.

She works as a postdoctoral scholar at Dr. Robert Bonomo’s lab. Dr. Mojica's research interests on antimicrobial resistance are focused on β-lactam resistance in Gram-negative bacilli, specifically mechanistic and structural–function relationship studies on metallo-β-lactamases (MBLs), development of MBL inhibitors, and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. 

Dr. Paula Watnick is a senior associate physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital and an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She practices pediatric infectious diseases and studies intestinal pathogens and their interactions with the host intestine.

Watnick completed graduate work in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and subsequently attended Yale Medical School, did a residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and completed a clinical fellowship in infectious diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a postdoctoral fellowship in bacterial genetics at Harvard Medical School.   

Watnick’s research interests currently include biofilm-based vaccines, metabolic control of bacterial transcription and the impact of commensal metabolites and pathogen quorum sensing on host innate immunity and metabolic homeostasis in model hosts. She is on the editorial board of Infection and Immunity, a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a member of the American Academy of Microbiology.
 

Gregory J. Berry, Ph.D., D(ABMM), is a board-certified diplomate of the American Board of Medical Microbiology. He received his Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and completed a fellowship in medical and public health microbiology at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

Berry specializes in the application of infectious disease testing for the clinical diagnosis of disease and patient management. His research interests include the optimization of current methodologies and the development of new technologies for patient-centered clinical testing.

K. Heran Darwin, Ph.D., is a professor of microbiology at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. Darwin has dedicated her career to the study of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of the human disease tuberculosis (TB). TB is the deadliest infectious disease in the world, responsible for 1.5 million deaths annually.
 
Darwin earned her Ph.D. in Salmonella pathogenesis with Professor Virginia Miller at the University of California Los Angeles and completed post-doctoral research in TB with Professor Carl Nathan of Weill Medical College at Cornell University. She serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Bacteriology and mBio. Darwin was named an American Academy of Microbiology Fellow in 2016 and was a Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012.
 
Darwin’s research interests revolve around a protease complex called the proteasome in M. tuberculosis, which is essential to the ability of the bacteria to cause lethal infections in a host. Researchers in the lab use genetics and biochemistry to understand the proteasome’s functions and pathways and the implications for understanding the relationships between M. tuberculosis and an infected host.

Sunny Shin, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Shin received her B.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her Ph.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine, and her postdoctoral training from Yale University School of Medicine.

Her research is focused on understanding mechanisms of immune defense against the bacterial pathogens Legionella pneumophila, Coxiella burnetii, and Salmonella Typhimurium and in turn, how these pathogens subvert host immunity. She has received several honors including the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases Award and the Penn Medicine Michael S. Brown New Investigator Award. She is highly committed to mentoring the next generation of scientists and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in academia and science, and she recently received the Penn Medicine Michael P. Nusbaum Graduate Student Mentoring Award.

Shin is vice-chair of the Cellular and Molecular Biology Graduate Group’s Microbiology, Virology, and Parasitology Program, directs or teaches graduate and medical courses, and mentors postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students. She serves on the NIH Host Interactions with Bacterial Pathogens study section (2020-2024) and on the editorial board of Infection and Immunity.

Dr. Paul Fidel, Jr. received a B.S. in Biology from Allegheny College, Meadville, PA in 1984 and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Oklahoma in 1988. Following a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, MI, Department of Immunology and Microbiology, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases in 1990. 

In 1995, Fidel went to Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans as Associate Professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Parasitology. After promotion to Professor in 1999, he was named holder of the Carl Baldridge Endowed Chair in Oral and Craniofacial Biology and appointed the Director of the Center of Excellence in Oral and Craniofacial Biology in 2001. He has authored ~200 publications and has been continuously funded by extramural sources, primarily NIH, since 1994. He was inducted into the American Academy of Microbiology in 2018. 

Fidel’s research has impacted the fields of medical mycology and infectious disease. Pioneering studies using novel mouse models and clinical studies have defined unique paradigm-changing aspects of host-pathogen interactions in mucosal candidiasis. Most recently, he is conducting clinical trials evaluating live attenuated vaccines (MMR) to mitigate COVID-related sepsis.

Thirumalai R. Kannan, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology & Molecular Genetics at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Kannan’s research mainly focuses on the complex interaction between bacterial pathogens and host cells. His laboratory studies the pathogenesis of two important human pathogens, Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Mycoplasma genitalium. Despite their very small genomes Mycoplasmas have developed unique ways to interact with their hosts. During their co-evolutionary balance mycoplasmas have evolved an array of virulence factors well suited to counteract a variety of host-cell responses in order to adhere/invade, survive and replicate within their hosts. His research focuses on identifying and characterizing the mycoplasma virulence determinants involved in these interactions as well as the molecular, cellular and immunobiology of these processes. The approaches comprise bacterial genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, animal models and imaging.

Specific areas of interest include:

- Study the mechanism of pathogenesis of M. pneumoniae through "Community acquired respiratory distress syndrome (CARDS) toxin," a toxin exclusively produced by M. pneumoniae.

- Study the mechanisms by which M. genitalium adheres, internalizes and survives within host cells. In particular, understanding how this bacterium exploits host-cell machinery to gain access to the cell.
 

Dr. Gisela Storz is an NIH Distinguished Investigator in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

She received a B.A. in Biochemistry from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1984 and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1988 from the University of California at Berkeley, where she worked with Bruce Ames. After postdoctoral fellowships with Sankar Adhya at the National Cancer Institute and Fred Ausubel at Harvard Medical School, she became an investigator at NIH in 1991.

Storz's group has worked on the sensing of oxidative stress and the roles of regulatory RNAs and small proteins in bacteria. Mentoring is very important to Storz, and she and members of her group have received multiple mentoring awards. Additionally, she proposed and is former chair of the NIH Equity Committee.

Dr. Kyle MacLea is an associate professor of biological sciences and biotechnology at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). He is the program coordinator for undergraduate and graduate biosciences on the Manchester campus of UNH and teaches courses in microbiology and molecular biology.

MacLea's research work spans the microbial sciences, from the genomics of bacteria, archaea and bacteriophages, to the molecular and cellular biology of prions in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In science education, his focus is on educating the next generation of biologists and microbiologists, with a particular focus on teaching students to communicate their science with the general public.

He holds an A.B. in Biology from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology/Toxicology from Dartmouth College. 

Dr. Prahathees Eswara grew up in India with a fascination for science. He received his B.S. in Applied Sciences from Periyar University in India and became a first-generation college graduate. Because of his persistent interest in biology and computer programming, he obtained a M.S. in bioinformatics from the same university. During this time, he gained experience in structural biology at Madras University, All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, which motivated him to pursue a career in research.

Dr. Eswara earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Houston. His dissertation research focused on sporulation initiation pathways in Bacillus subtilis. Dr. Eswara then joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at Bethesda, Md. for his postdoctoral research, where he applied advanced, super-resolution microscopy techniques to understand how bacterial cells divide. Subsequently, he accepted a faculty position at the University of South Florida.

In addition to studying diverse processes in B. subtilis, Dr. Eswara expanded his research program to include Staphylococcus aureus cell division and antibiotic resistance mechanisms. The projects in his lab are funded by the 5-year NIH R35 Outstanding Investigator Award.

Cecilia Martinez-Gomez's term as a division councilor runs through 2024.

 

 

 

Dr. Ostrowsky is currently a field medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Division of Quality Healthcare Promotion (CDC, DHQP) in New York. She works closely with NYSDOH, other public health, facility and professional groups on Healthcare Associated infections (HAI), Antimicrobial Resistance (AR) and Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (ASP) topics, including C. auris, multi-drug resistant gram negatives and most recently COVID-19. She formerly was the Director of Epidemiology, Stewardship, and Infection Prevention at Montefiore/ Einstein, Bronx, N.Y. and remains an Associate Professional at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Ostrowsky has worked locally in the N.Y. area and nationally on a series of ASP and HAI collaboratives. This included being the co-lead context expert for the United Hospital Fund (UHF) Outpatient Stewardship Initiatives for Acute Respiratory Infections and a series of collaboratives on C. difficile and ASP (with Greater NY Hospital Association (GNYHA)]. She is a fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of American (IDSA) and the Society for Health Care Epidemiologist of America (SHEA).  She was the chair of the SHEA Annual Spring Meeting in 2017 and is the current chair of the SHEA Education Committee.  She’s a current member of the IDweek Program Committee.

Dr. Hatoum-Aslan is an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She received her B.Sc. in molecular biology from Florida Tech, M.Sc. in biochemistry from the American University of Beirut and her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cornell University in 2007. Subsequently, she completed postdoctoral training at the Rockefeller University in the Laboratory of Bacteriology. She started her independent research program at the University of Alabama in 2014 and moved to UIUC in 2020.
 
Her research aims to advance the basic knowledge of how bacteria and their viruses (i.e. phages) interact and explore new paradigms that challenge fundamental assumptions regarding bacterial immunity. Also, basic insights into bacterial immune systems such as CRISPR-Cas, and the phage-encoded mechanisms that counter them, are synergistically applied to discover and engineer new phages as a basis for alternative treatments for antibiotic-resistant infections. She has received several honors, including an NIH K22 Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases Award.
 
Hatoum-Aslan is also highly-committed to mentoring the next generation of scientists and spearheaded multiple outreach and educational initiatives that provide active learning and research opportunities for underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines.

Rachel Poretsky, Ph.D., hails from the great urban microbial hotspot of Brooklyn, NY and is currently an associate professor in biological sciences with a courtesy appointment in
civil, materials and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, located in another major urban microbial hotspot.
 
Poretsky obtained a B.S. in biology from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in marine sciences from the University of Georgia. She was a postdoc at Caltech in geology and planetary sciences and at Georgia Tech in environmental engineering. She serves on the editorial boards of multiple journals including ASM’s Applied and Environmental Microbiology and mSystems.
 
Poretsky’s research interests are in microbial ecology and biogeochemistry, bacterial diversity and community structure and interactions in natural environments. She has done pioneering work looking at genes and gene expression of microbial communities in the ocean, freshwater lakes and rivers and wastewater. 

Dr. Ujor received his B.S. in applied microbiology and brewing from the Enugu State University of Science and Technology (Enugu, Nigeria) and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Westminster, London, U.K. He was previously an assistant professor at The Ohio State University before joining the department of food science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is currently an assistant professor.

Ujor’s research deploys metabolic engineering and fermentation as tools for understanding the complex metabolic networks in fermentative organisms. His goal is to rewire solvent-producing microbes toward enhanced production of target bio-chemicals (from renewable feedstocks) with sundry applications across society. His work also seeks to repurpose assorted organic liquid wastes as feedstocks for producing value-added chemicals, whilst recovering valuable water.
 

Dr. Dudley has a B.S. in Microbiology from Penn State, and an M.S. in Food Science and Ph.D. in Bacteriology, both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His training has spanned various areas of food microbiology, including the genetics and physiology of lactic acid bacteria, the mechanisms of virulence of E. coli and the use of genomics to define routes of transmission during foodborne outbreaks. He is currently an Associate Professor of Food Science at Penn State, and also serves as the Director of Penn State’s E. coli Reference Center. His group leads Pennsylvania’s involvement in a Food & Drug Administration (FDA) program called GenomeTrakr, the goals of which include assisting public health laboratories as they transition to using whole genome sequences in foodborne outbreak investigations. He is the current head of the Applied and Environmental Science track for the annual ASM Microbe meetings and serves as an editor for the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Joshua Steele, Ph.D., is a senior scientist in the department of microbiology at the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP), specializing in environmental microbiology.
 
Steele received his Ph.D. in biology focusing on biological oceanography from the University of Southern California. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral scholar in geomicrobiology at the California Institute of Technology. He is an associate editor at Frontiers in Microbiology and chair of the Wastewater Based Epidemiology Committee of the California Water Quality Monitoring Council.
 
His research focuses on developing methods to identify and track human-associated bacteria and viruses and identify their sources in stormwater and coastal water, developing and standardizing methods for wastewater based epidemiology of pathogens (including SARS-CoV-2), tracking and naturally occurring bacteria in coastal natural and built environments, applying molecular techniques to track antibiotic resistance genes in wastewater and the environment and using bioinformatics tools to link eDNA from natural populations to ecosystem health.

Vaughn Cooper, Ph.D., 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. At MSU, Vaughn studied the evolution of specialization in the long-term evolution experiment of E. coli populations.

Cooper 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. Cooper was an 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.

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.

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.

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.
 

Nancy L. Haigwood, Ph.D., is a professor of pathobiology and immunology at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Her research focuses on vaccines and antibodies as therapies to prevent vertical transmission of HIV from mothers to infants. Encouraging findings from her nonhuman primate research are helping to guide the clinical development of antibodies as therapies to prevent HIV and AIDS in children. 

Haigwood received her B.S. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed postdoctoral research at The Johns Hopkins University. She spent 17 years in biotech and pharma before joining the nonprofit Seattle Biomedical Research Institute and the University of Washington. She served as Director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center at OHSU for 15 years and has authored or co-authored 135 publications. Her service has included numerous national and local advisory boards, including chairing the AIDS Research Advisory Committee and service on the NIH Council of Councils. 

Haigwood’s honors include, election to the American Academy of Microbiology in 2014 and receipt of the 2022 NorthWest Association for Biomedical Research Alvord Award and the 2022 Hero of HIV Award from Cascade AIDS Project. She is an advocate for science education and openness in research.

Dr. Sloan Siegrist is an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. After growing up on Guam, she received a B.A. in Human Biology at Stanford University. Her Ph.D. work with Dr. Eric Rubin, Harvard School of Public Health, focused on mycobacterial genetics and her postdoctoral research with Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi, then at University of California Berkeley, centered on chemical probes for cell wall peptidoglycan. At UMass Amherst, the Siegrist group studies the organization of the (myco)bacterial cell envelope and engineers its components for translational applications.

Yun F (Wayne) Wang's term as a Division V. Clinical and Diagnostic Immunology councilor runs through 2026.

Jennifer A. Herzog, M.S. is an associate professor of Biology at Herkimer College and director of the Herkimer College Honors Program. She received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, as well as Utica College's Adjunct Faculty Teaching Award.

Herzog holds a strong interest in developing novel teaching strategies for science education and has created a number of programs for K-career microbiology education within her community. Distance learning has afforded her the opportunity to develop many innovative ways to convey biological concepts and techniques online.

Professionally, in her field, she has been an active member of the American Society for Microbiology for more than 25 years. She has served varying roles within Microbe Library and the Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education, and recently was named the Division W (Microbiology Education) Councilor Elect for the Council on Microbial Sciences.

Edwin Kamau received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, La., and a master’s degree in technology management from University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), Adelphi, Md. He also completed a 2-year CPEP clinical microbiology fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Calif.

Kamau is currently the Chief and Medical Director of the Microbiology Laboratory at Tripler Army Medical Center, Honolulu, Hawaii. His interests and clinical studies focus on new diagnostics, infection prevention, antimicrobial stewardship, surveillance and more.

Kamau has more than 15 years of experience conducting studies in malaria diagnostics, drug resistance, genetics and genomic and epidemiological studies. He also has experience in vaccine and drug clinical field trials and controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) studies. As the Chief of the Department of Epidemiology and Threat Assessment at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), he conducted clinical studies in sexually transmitted diseases in the U.S. Army.

While in Malaria Vaccine Branch at WRAIR, he developed and evaluated new malaria parasite culture lines and conduct a CHMI. As the Director of MDR at USAMRU-K field station (in Kenya), he conducted malaria drug resistance and epidemiology studies using various tools, including efficacy trials, in vitro studies, molecular and genetic studies, bioinformatics and big data analyses. 

Anthony (Tony) Tran, Dr.PH., M.P.H., D(ABMM), MT(ASCP), is director of the FDA’s San Francisco Laboratory. He received his B.S. in medical technology from the University of Maryland at Baltimore, School of Medicine, his M.P.H. from the University of Maryland, College Park and his Dr.PH. from the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his clinical microbiology fellowship from UNC Health Care and is a diplomate of the American Board of Medical Microbiology.
 
He has nearly 20 years of public health and clinical laboratory experience, including work at the national, state and local levels. Prior to his doctorate, he worked at the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL). More recently, as the director of policy and operations at the NYC Bureau of the Public Health Laboratory, Tran provided guidance and direction to all areas of the laboratory and was involved in the City’s response to Ebola, NYC’s largest Legionnaires’ disease outbreak and Zika. He then served as director of the District of Columbia’s Public Health Laboratory where he led the city’s testing efforts in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He also was a member of the APHL board of directors and their COVID-19 task force.

Indira Kudva, Ph.D., is a research microbiologist at the United States Department of Agriculture—Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa. She received her B.S in zoology and M.S. in medical microbiology from India, and a Ph.D. in microbiology, molecular miology and miochemistry from the University of Idaho under the mentorship of Dr. Carolyn H. Bohach. Subsequently she completed postdoctoral fellowships, in microbiology at the University of Idaho, and in infectious diseases with Dr. Stephen B. Calderwood at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Kudva has dedicated her career to the study of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) interactions with animal and human hosts. Her current research is focused on preharvest control of STEC in cattle to mitigate "farm to fork" contamination of food. Projects in Kudva’s laboratory, designed to analyze STEC colonization dynamics and identify key targets for therapeutic and diagnostic use, address: (i) STEC factors that promote survival and persistence in the ruminant host, (ii) STEC interactions with the bovine gastrointestinal cells and adherence mechanisms deployed in a strain and host-dependent manner, (iii) development of rational vaccines and vaccine-alternatives targeting STEC in cattle and (iv) development of diagnostic assays to study STEC adherence and identify STEC-colonized cattle.

Zhicheng Dou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Clemson University in Clemson, S.C. He received his Bachelor's degree in Life Sciences with an emphasis on Biochemistry at Fudan University located in Shanghai, China, in 2002. He was awarded a Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2009.

His graduate work focuses on understanding the CO2 fixation by a primitive organelle termed carboxysome in a sulfur-oxidizing bacterium, Halothiobacillus neapolitanus. He switched his research emphasis from environmental microbiology to parasite pathogenesis during his postdoctoral training at the Carruthers' lab in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan (2009 – 2015). He studied the proteolytic mechanism of Toxoplasma gondii infection in mammalian cells. He moved to Clemson University in August 2015 and accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Biological Sciences.

His current research studies nutrient acquisition and utilization in Toxoplasma parasites. Please refer to his lab website www.thedoulab.com for more information and connect with him via his Twitter account at @bigbean777.

Since Dr. Fisher's first microbiology course, which changed the trajectory of his education and career, he has been excited about learning the secrets of microbes. His efforts have focused on advancing the field of microbiology through diverse approaches, with an emphasis on improving infectious disease diagnostics, broadening our understanding of the diversity of microbes and their pathology and understanding the impacts and distribution of antimicrobial resistance.

Whether contributing to the discovery of new bacterial species, evaluating new antimicrobial compounds or consulting on a case in the clinical lab, he is often humbled by how "smart" microbes can be. This respect for microbes has held his interest for more than 30 years and promises to continue for many years to come.

Peter Girguis is a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University. His research focuses on understanding the physiological and biochemical adaptation of microbes and animals to "extreme environments." He is renowned for building novel instruments and sensors, such as underwater mass spectrometers and microscale microbial samplers.

Dr. Girguis received his B.S. from the University of California, Los Angeles; his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara; and completed postdoctoral research at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute prior to joining Harvard University. He was a Distinguished Lecturer for the National Science Foundation, a Merck Co. Innovative Research Awardee and a Department of Energy E.C.-U.S. Biotechnology Fellow. Dr. Girguis has authored or co-authored over 95 publications, served as Chair of the National Deep Submergence Science Committee (2010-2016) and serves as a member of several notable ocean advisory boards, including the Ocean Exploration Trust.

Girguis’ honors include the 2007 and 2011 Lindbergh Foundation Award for Science & Sustainability, the 2018 Lowell Thomas Award for groundbreaking advances in Marine Science and Technology and the 2020 Petra Shattuck Award for Distinguished Teaching. He was named a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Investigator for his research on marine symbioses.

Dr. Birthe Kjellerup is an associate professor and chair of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of Maryland (UMD), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with a secondary appointment in the Fischell Department of BioEngineering.

Kjellerup began her training at Aalborg University, Denmark, where she received her Ph.D. in 2004. As a part of her graduate studies, she trained at the Center for Biofilm Engineering (CBE) in Montana, and currently has an adjunct appointment at CBE. Kjellerup continued as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center of Marine Biotechnology, Baltimore, where she researched environmental biofilms. From 2009 to 2014, Kjellerup was an Assistant Professor at Goucher College (PUI), Baltimore. In 2015, she transitioned to UMD, where she received tenure in 2019.

Kjellerup has trained as an environmental engineer and microbiologist with an interest in beneficial (bioremediation) and detrimental (orthopedic implants) microbial communities for more than 20 years.

Dr. Eric Miller obtained his B.A. at Santa Rosa JC (A.S.), California State University, Chico, and Ph.D. at Purdue University. He conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Colorado and the MRC Cambridge. He has held faculty positions at North Carolina State University in microbiology and currently in plant and microbial biology. Administrative roles have included head of microbiology (2007 to 2013), chair of the university research committee, chair of the RPT committee, director of microbiology graduate programs and member of the NCSU science realignment committee. He has mentored M.S. and Ph.D. students, served on graduate committees across disciplines, taught graduate microbial genetics and genomics, HHMI SEA-PHAGES undergraduate research courses and science communication and professional development.

His research program involved phage T4 translational control, phage genomics (KVP40, others), projects on Aeromicrobium erythraeum (erythromycin), Bacillus (proteases), Mycolicibacterium ELW1 (isobutylene catabolism), cyanobacterium HT-58-2 (tolyporphins) and the honeybee pathogen Paenibacillus larvae, all with fruitful collaborations.

Andrea Prinzi, Ph.D., MPH, SM(ASCP), is a clinical microbiologist by training and spent over 12 years working at Children’s Hospital Colorado as a clinical laboratory scientist. She has a Ph.D. in clinical and translational science, as well as a master's degree in public health from the University of Colorado Denver, and was a 2018 American Society for Clinical Pathology "40 Under Forty" awardee. She is currently an infectious disease medical science liaison and works to bridge the gap between clinical diagnostics and clinical practice.

Dr. Elizabeth A. Shank is a molecular microbiologist whose lab studies the chemical and physical interactions of bacteria and fungi with each other and with their plant and human hosts. They use microbiology, fluorescence imaging, mass spectrometry and computational approaches to answer outstanding questions in microbial ecology and apply this knowledge to environmental and clinical challenges.

The research in her lab spans environmental, mechanistic and clinical questions. (How do microbes degrade carbon in the soil? How does methylation impact bacterial gene expression? Can we discover new antibiotics through bacterial coculture?) She started her laboratory at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2013 and relocated to the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in 2020, where she is an associate professor in the Department of Systems Biology.

In addition to research, she is passionate about enhancing both her own and her colleagues' mentoring and advising capabilities, improving graduate training and increasing diversity at all levels of science.

Braden Tierney is a joint postdoctoral candidate between Chris Mason's lab at Weill Cornell Medical College and George Church's lab at Harvard Medical School. His postdoctoral work involves building new algorithms for large-scale microbial comparative genomics across ecosystems (e.g., space and the oceans) and hosts. He also works with Seed Health, where he manages some of their early-stage probiotic development research, focusing on non-human ecosystems (e.g., corals).

Tierney completed his Ph.D. at Harvard Medical School in the labs of Chirag Patel and Aleksandar Kostic, working on computational methods for robust, gene-level microbiome analysis in the context of various human diseases. Tierney did his undergraduate work at Duke University, where he majored in biology and economics, and in his spare time is an avid scuba diver and runner.

Dr. Mark Willcox is a medical microbiologist and professor in the School of Optometry and Vision Science, UNSW Sydney in Australia. He earned his Ph.D. from Manchester University, U.K. His laboratory focuses on development of novel antimicrobials that have applications as antibiotics and disinfectants, as well as new antimicrobial coatings for medical devices. He has taken several of these through to preclinical testing and antimicrobial contact lenses through to phase III clinical trials. His research includes adhesion and biofilm formation by pathogenic microbes (most notably Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus). He has also studied biofilm formation by oral bacteria and fungi, as well as set up a coronavirus testing facility.

Willcox has a strong commitment to postgraduate research and their subsequent research careers. He has supervised 68 Ph.D. students and currently supervises 17. He is also committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and was a Diversity Champion at UNSW from 2016 to 2019.