Lab alumni: Senior Honors Thesis students in Biology or BCBP
Samantha Liu '21 began in the lab as a SURF student, and then completed her thesis in Biology pioneering an assay to search for signals involved in the CrbSR system. She then moved on to the Dougan lab at Dana Farber.
Emily Flaherty '19 first joined us as a SURF fellow in June of 2016. She looked at aspects of Kalle's project investigating acetylation as a mechanism that that regulates virulence of V. cholerae towards Drosophila. During the 2018-19 year, she completed her senior thesis in Chemistry in our lab, working on a collaborative project with Josh Sharp at NMU, and is now in medical school at the University of Pittsburgh.
Elisa Bello '19 joined the lab as a senior honors thesis student in Biochemistry/Biophysics to investigate acs regulation, continuing some aspects of both Duy's and Itai's projects. After completing her thesis, she went on to join Stephanie Dougan's lab at the Dana Farber Cancer Research Center as a research assistant, and then began medical school at UMass.
Sarah Nessen '18 joined the lab as a senior honors thesis student in August of 2017 to continue the V. fischeri project! She gave an excellent talk at the American Society for Microbiology Vibrio2017 meeting in Chicago, and she was Biology's representative in Amherst's 3 Minute Thesis competition! After completing an excellent honors thesis in Biology, she taught English in France for year, and she is currently a medical student at UPenn.
|
Sarah Ibrahimi '20 completed her thesis in BCBP working on our collaborative project with Josh Sharp's lab. She is now working as a clinical trials assistant at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Kyra Raines '20 (right) was a SURF fellow in the lab, working on the Vibrio fischeri project, in 2017. She continued in the lab during the 2017-18 year, and then returned home to Madison to spend the summer of 2018 in Mark Mandel's lab at the Univ. of Wisconsin. She completed her senior honors thesis in Biology in 2020, and is now a research technician at the Broad Institute in Deb Hung's lab.
Gabby Ro '19 joined us as a Greg Call Fellow in August of 2017. She wrapped up the project investigating acetylation in V. cholerae. In 2019, she completed her senior honors thesis in Biology, switching gears to work on V. fischeri, and afterwards she moved on to Stephanie Dougan's lab at Dana Farber Cancer Center as a research assistant.
Itai Muzhingi '18 joined the lab in the fall of 2016, and continued as a thesis student in the Biochemistry/Biophysics Program in the 2017-2018 academic year. He won a poster award (for graduate students) at the American Society for Microbiology Vibrio2017 meeting in Chicago! After completing his thesis, he was a research assistant in Bruce Walker's lab at the Ragon Institute, and then he moved on to begin his Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford.
|
Duy Nguyen '17 joined to lab in January 2016 to help wrap up a small project on house flies in collaboration with John Stoffolano at UMass-Amherst. As a tremendously dedicated thesis student in the lab, he worked on regulation of the crbS and crbR genes! He also pioneered the introduction of HCR-FISH to the lab -- a tremendous feat. After Amherst, Duy worked as a research assistant at the University of Pennsylvania, and he is currently an MD/PhD student at the University of Rochester.
|
Stephany Flores-Ramos '17 joined the lab in June of 2015 as a SURF student. She received a Kaufman Fellowship to fund an internship in Ned Ruby's lab in 2016. As a thesis student, she began our collaboration with Mark Mandel to study CrbS and CrbR in V. fischeri. She then moved on to become a research assistant in Katherine Lemon's lab at the Forsyth Institute, and is currently a PhD student at UCSD, funded in part by the Soros Foundation for New Americans.
|
Kalle Liimatta '16 joined the lab in June of 2014 as a Sarles Fellow supported by the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program at Amherst College. She continued in the lab as a thesis student, and she presented her findings both at the inaugural Pioneer Valley Microbiology Symposium in January 2016, and at the American Society for Microbiology Microbe 2016! After Amherst, she was a research assistant at Columbia University, and she is currently a PhD student at UCSD.
|
Mariame Sylla '15 joined the lab in the fall of 2012, and stayed on during the summer of 2013 as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute summer research fellow, and she completed an excellent thesis looking at regulatory pathways affecting acetate uptake by Vibrio cholerae in 2015. After participating in the INRO program at the NIAID at the National Institutes of Health in February '15, she completed a postbac fellowship at the NIH, she graduated from Harvard Medical School, and is now completing residency in Boston.
|
Monica Cesinger '15 joined the lab in August of 2014 to look at different regulatory pathways mediating acetate uptake by Vibrio cholerae. She completed a really outstanding thesis and graduated in 2015. Luckily, she stayed on in the lab over the summer as postbac fellow to wrap up a few experiments. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Washington in microbiology.
|
Franny Diehl '15 joined the lab in the summer of 2014 and completed a fantastic honors thesis in the lab in the spring of 2015 focusing on a structure-function analysis of the CrbRS two component system. She completed her PhD at MIT, and is now starting a postdoc at Johns Hopkins.
|
Paul Tyler '14 joined the lab in August of 2013, and he too completed a phenomenal honors thesis in the lab in 2014. After Amherst, he worked as a research assistant in the Dougan Lab at Dana-Farber and he entered the PhD program at Yale University in the fall of 2016.
|
Mariah Servos '14 joined the lab in the summer of 2013, completed a stellar honors thesis during the 2013-2014 academic year. After Amherst, Mariah worked as a research assistant in the Dougan Lab at Dana-Farber and began at Dartmouth for medical school in the fall of 2016.
|
Anna setting up an experiment in our wonderful fly room!
Anna Rasmussen '13 completed her excellent honors thesis in the lab in the spring of 2013. She was instrumental in getting the lab up and running, troubleshooting protocols, making our lab's first V. cholerae mutants. After working in the Oono Lab at UC Santa Barbara on microbial symbionts of plants, she was a research assistant in the Chisholm Lab at MIT. She received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and she started her PhD in microbial ecology in Chris Francis' lab at Stanford in the fall of 2016!
Lab alumni
Theo Bates '20, Ella Rossa '21, Teddy Lane '20, Danielle Zimber '21 (not pictured) and Eunice Daudu '21 (also not pictured) were a huge help with our Vibrio fischeri screen!
Sam Grondin '21 was a huge help with our Vibrio fischeri screen!
|
Nathaniel De Jonge '21 and Andrea Munoz Ledo '22 assisted with analyzing our RNASeq data!
Kennedy Countess '18 joined the lab in the fall of 2018 as a postbac fellow and worked on a Vibrio fischeri project investigating the impact of oxygen on gene expression.
|
Anna Buford '20 and Will Dunne '20 assisted with our search for new regulators of acetate metabolism in Vibrio, having completed Microbiology in the spring!
|
Caroline Ferguson-Dryden '20 and Bella Palma '20, both alums of Microbiology w/lab, continued our hunt for regulators of acetate metabolism!
|
Cecilia Prado joined us as a research assistant in February 2016. She completed her BS at UMass-Amherst in Microbiology, and she kept the lab running for three years (as evidenced by her appearances in so many pictures!) She was an enthusiastic and creative presence in the lab, and she has moved on to fulfill her passions for social justice and equity.
Sarah Wishloff '19 worked on the Vibrio fischeri project, pioneering our mutagenesis screen!
Rachel Seifert '19 was a Biochemistry/Biophysics major and she worked on regulatory pathways leading to acs regulation in V. cholerae!
SabriAnan Micha '19 worked on the Vibrio fischeri project in the spring of 2017!
Jenny Kim '19 helped us out with a number of experiments, and helped with the V. fischeri project!
|
Abby Mesfin '20 was a SURF fellow in the lab in 2017, working on the Vibrio fischeri project, and she continued in the lab as a research assistant during the 2017-18 academic year!
Victoria Luizzi '16 joined to lab in January 2016 to help wrap up a small project on house flies in collaboration with John Stoffolano at UMass-Amherst.
Angelika Hirsch '19 worked on the Vibrio fischeri project in the spring of 2017!
Lucy Xu '14 helped us care for our flies.
|
Libby Daniele was a research assistant in the lab, and a recent graduate of UMass-Amherst.
Azka Javaid '17 joined the lab in 2014, and she helped out with a project to generate a lacZ fusion to a gene that may be involved in acetate uptake.
|
John Kim '15 joined the lab for the summer of 2013 as an academic intern helping to characterize bacterial strains for the laboratory portion of the Microbiology course.
Catherine Choi '15 also joined the lab for the summer of 2013 as an academic intern. She performed a variety of biochemical tests to characterize bacterial strains for Microbiology lab.
|