I'm an assistant professor of animal and veterinary studies at the University of Maine, Orono, studying how animals get their microbes. I am also the Founder and Lead of the Microbes and Social Equity working group.
The prize is part of the Applied Microbiology International Horizon Awards 2025, which celebrate the brightest minds in the field and promote the research, group, projects, products and individuals who continue to help shape the future of applied microbiology. The Dorothy Jones Diversity and Inclusion Achievement Award honours Dorothy Jones’ commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion within STEM. This award acknowledges individuals or organisations that have made significant strides in these areas. It celebrates initiatives that dismantle barriers to participation and representation, especially for underrepresented groups, and recognises inclusive research and experimental design and practice.
We’re thrilled to share that Dr. Lola Holcomb, who recently completed her PhD in Biomedical Science at the University of Maine, will be joining Dr. Eben Estell’s lab at the University of New England as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow! Dr. Estell is a new faculty member starting up a lab developing tissue engineered models for bone mechanobiology, and this position will focus on data analysis and conceptual models on how cells interact with mechanical structures, to create better medical treatments.
During her doctoral work in the Ishaq Lab, Lola investigated how diet and gut microbiota interact to influence host health, with a particular focus on glucosinolate-metabolizing bacteria and the effects of broccoli sprout consumption. Her research combined bioinformatics, metagenomic data analysis, and microbial ecology, resulting in new insights into how diet-driven changes in microbial function relate to host physiology.
In her postdoctoral position, Lola will be bridging her bioinformatics expertise with her original background in exercise physiology to explore how mechanical loading, irisin, and bone cell biology are interconnected. This new role beautifully integrates her computational skills with her passion for physiology and health — a truly interdisciplinary continuation of her scientific journey.
One of Lola’s favorite memories from her time in the lab was traveling together to the ISME conference in Cape Town, where she presented her work to an international audience of microbial ecology researchers. It was a fantastic milestone that captured her growth as both a scientist and communicator.
We can’t wait to see where Lola’s research takes her next! Luckily, Lola will still be collaborating a bit with the Ishaq Lab to finish out several projects from her doctoral work. This includes genomic comparisons of bacteria which can convert glucoraphanin into sulforaphane, metagenomics of the gut bacteria of people consuming broccoli sprouts every day for a month, and several collaborations on human microbiome research.
Events will be hosted January – December, 2025, usually on the last Wednesday of every month, 12:00 – 14:00 pm ET. Presented over Zoom.
After each talk, we will continue the discussions in an informal social meeting with MSE. All speakers and members of the audience are welcome to join the social meeting.
Hosted by: Sue Ishaq, MSE, and finacially supported by the University of Maine Institute of Medicine and the UMaine Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Committee.
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health. Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. This speaker series explores the way that microbes connect public policy, social disparities, and human health, as well as the ongoing research, education, policy, and innovation in this field.
Kristen got her PhD in Microbiology from the University of California Berkeley, and was trained in microbial ecology and environmental microbiology as a postdoc at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and at the Joint BioEnergy Institute. Born in Massachusetts, she has worked at UMass Amherst since 2011, where she is the lead of the Molecular Microbial Ecology Lab in the department of Microbiology. In the past 5 years alone, she became an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, she’s been awarded Distinguished Lecturer from the American Society for Microbiology and UMass, she received the Chancellor’s Medal from UMass, and she was the Harvard Forest Bullard Fellow.
Kristen loves teaching (and learning) bioinformatics and computer programming, crosswords, drawing, and hiking western Mass with her two kids and crazy dog Suki. Her lab website is here.
Kristen was one of the earliest members of MSE, contributing to a science communications piece and the paper which introduced MSE to the world!
Ishaq, S.L., Parada, F.J., Wolf, P.G., Bonilla, C.Y., Carney, M.A., Benezra, A., Wissel, E., Friedman, M., DeAngelis, K.M., Robinson, J.M., Fahimipour, A.K., Manus, M.B., Grieneisen, L., Dietz, L.G., Pathak, A., Chauhan, A., Kuthyar, S., Stewart, J.D., Dasari, M.R., Nonnamaker, E., Choudoir, M., Horve, P.F., Zimmerman, N.B., Kozik, A.J., Darling, K.W., Romero-Olivares, A.L., Hariharan, J., Farmer, N., Maki, K.A., Collier, J.L., O’Doherty, K., Letourneau, J., Kline, J., Moses, P.L., Morar, N. 2021. Introducing the Microbes and Social Equity Working Group: Considering the Microbial Components of Social, Environmental, and Health Justice. mSystems 6:4. Special Series: Social Equity as a Means of Resolving Disparities in Microbial Exposure
Since the summer of 2023, I have been part of an interdisciplinary team that examines the way microbiome researchers use social and population descriptors for people in their analysis. In many cases, only basic information about a person is available in large datasets that are publicly available to use, or detailed information about a person is difficult to obtain during a study, thus many researchers rely on “proxy terms” to try and understand how human microbiomes are assembled and changed. Proxy terms are broad categories that group people, such as geographic area or race, but often these are too broad to be used for any meaningful analysis, especially when working with biological data.
‘Race’ is a relatively new concept used to describe social groups, and as discussed brilliantly in the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s report on “Use of Race, Ethnicity, and Ancestry as Population Descriptors in Genomics Research“, it has been mis-used for several hundred years to insinuate basic biological differences between people. This was done intentionally to justify discrimination all the way up to slavery, but it has been unintentionally propagated into research through the use of race as a proxy term to represent someone’s lifestyle. In recent decades, microbiome research has been trying to understand how human lives affect the microbiomes they accumulate, and similarly has sometimes incorrectly espoused the idea that vague social categories manifest as biological differences.
Our group delved in the history of race in biological science, case studies where results that implicate race led to discriminatory policy and practice, and give guidelines for selecting more specific factors to understand the social and environmental impacts on the microbiome.
Authors: Nicole M. Farmer1,2, Amber Benezra1,3, Katherine A. Maki1, Suzanne L. Ishaq1,2,Ariangela J. Kozik1,2,4,5*
Affiliations:
1 The Microbes and Social Equity working group, Orono, Maine, USA; 2 Nova Institute for Health, Baltimore, MD; 3 Science and Technology Studies, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA; 4 Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA; 5 Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Abstract
Microbiome science is a celebration of the connections between humans, our environment, and microbial organisms. We are continually learning more about our microbial fingerprint, how each microbiome may respond to identical stimuli differently, and how the quality of the environmental conditions around us influences the microorganisms we encounter and acquire. However, in this process of self-discovery, we have utilized socially constructed ideas about ourselves as biological factors, potentially obscuring the true nature of our relationships to each other, microbes, and the planet. The concept of race, which has continuously changing definitions over hundreds of years, is frequently operationalized as a proxy for biological variation and suggested to have a real impact on the microbiome. Scientists across disciplines and through decades of research have misused race as a biological determinant, resulting in falsely scientific justifications for social and political discrimination. However, concepts of race and ethnicity are highly nuanced, inconsistent, and culturally specific. Without training, microbiome researchers risk continuing to misconstrue these concepts as fixed biological factors that have direct impacts on our microbiomes and/or health. In 2023, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released recommendations on the use of population descriptors such as race and ethnicity in genetic science. In this paper, we posit similar recommendations that can and must be translated into microbiome science to avoid re-biologizing race and that push us toward the goal of understanding the microbiome as an engine of adaptation to help us thrive in a dynamic world.
Events will be hosted January – December, 2025, usually on the last Wednesday of every month, 12:00 – 14:00 pm ET. Presented over Zoom.
After each talk, we will continue the discussions in an informal social meeting with MSE. All speakers and members of the audience are welcome to join the social meeting.
Hosted by: Sue Ishaq, MSE, and finacially supported by the University of Maine Institute of Medicine and the UMaine Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Committee.
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health. Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. This speaker series explores the way that microbes connect public policy, social disparities, and human health, as well as the ongoing research, education, policy, and innovation in this field.
Kristen got her PhD in Microbiology from the University of California Berkeley, and was trained in microbial ecology and environmental microbiology as a postdoc at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and at the Joint BioEnergy Institute. Born in Massachusetts, she has worked at UMass Amherst since 2011, where she is the lead of the Molecular Microbial Ecology Lab in the department of Microbiology. In the past 5 years alone, she became an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, she’s been awarded Distinguished Lecturer from the American Society for Microbiology and UMass, she received the Chancellor’s Medal from UMass, and she was the Harvard Forest Bullard Fellow.
Kristen loves teaching (and learning) bioinformatics and computer programming, crosswords, drawing, and hiking western Mass with her two kids and crazy dog Suki. Her lab website is here.
Kristen was one of the earliest members of MSE, contributing to a science communications piece and the paper which introduced MSE to the world!
Ishaq, S.L., Parada, F.J., Wolf, P.G., Bonilla, C.Y., Carney, M.A., Benezra, A., Wissel, E., Friedman, M., DeAngelis, K.M., Robinson, J.M., Fahimipour, A.K., Manus, M.B., Grieneisen, L., Dietz, L.G., Pathak, A., Chauhan, A., Kuthyar, S., Stewart, J.D., Dasari, M.R., Nonnamaker, E., Choudoir, M., Horve, P.F., Zimmerman, N.B., Kozik, A.J., Darling, K.W., Romero-Olivares, A.L., Hariharan, J., Farmer, N., Maki, K.A., Collier, J.L., O’Doherty, K., Letourneau, J., Kline, J., Moses, P.L., Morar, N. 2021. Introducing the Microbes and Social Equity Working Group: Considering the Microbial Components of Social, Environmental, and Health Justice. mSystems 6:4. Special Series: Social Equity as a Means of Resolving Disparities in Microbial Exposure
The new IUCN Microbe group is being led by Drs. Jack Gilbert and Raquel Peixoto, who are internationally famous for their research into environmental microbiomes as well as their contributions to conservation. Now that the Microbe Group has been assembled, we have been working on creating a prospectus for the group which outlines our goals and activities for the next few years, as well as steps for recruiting research and policy expertise, as needed, setting up international working groups for implementing conservation, and opening the group for global supporting membership.
Back in May, I had the honor of attending a three-day workshop on “Conservation in a Microbial World“, which gathered researchers, innovators, and policy makers to discuss the concept, need, logistics, and possibility of formally making microorganisms part of the considerations of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the global organization which coordinates the protection of species and ecosystems. The meeting was to provide guidance to the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) on microbial ecology, ecosystems which are at risk or already losing micobial diversity because of degradation and human activities, as well as strategies to bring attention to the need to consider microbes in the health of organisms and ecosystems.
Attendees of the 2025 Conservation in a Microbial World meeting, Scripps, La Jolla.
Congratulations to Alexis Kirkendall, PhD candidate in the Microbiology Program, for passing her comprehensive exam!! The exam involved writing a research proposal on a topic outside of her main focus, and presenting her idea for an hour to her faculty committee, who then asked detailed questions about her work and understanding of this research for almost two hours.
Over the next two or three years, her dissertation research will focus on culturing bacteria that we previously isolated from mice consuming a steamed broccoli sprout diet, to test their capacity to grow amongst the gut pathogen Helicobacter pylori and produce the anti-inflammatory sulforphane under different conditions, as well as which bacteria produce sulforaphane in the gut, how they do it, and under which circumstances. It complements the collective lab research on how broccoli sprouts and gut microbes can be used to resolve Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
Alexis Kirkendall
Doctor of Philosophy candidate, Microbiology
Alexis is from Ohio and initially joined the lab in 2022 when she was majoring in Biology at Heidelberg University, through the Summer 2022 REU, during which she divided her time researching Cryptosporidium in cows, helping in the MSE Symposium, and aiding in the Camel Rumen Microbiome Project. Alexis continued her work remotely, and returned to Maine in summer 2023 as a research assistant for several projects related to gut microbes, diet, and Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Her research interests are in genetics and she has a love for the fascinating world of microbes.
She returned in January 2024 as a graduate student in the Microbiology program!
Events will be hosted January – December, 2025, on the last Wednesday of every month, 12:00 – 14:00 pm ET. Presented over Zoom.
After each talk, we will continue the discussions in an informal social meeting with MSE. All speakers and members of the audience are welcome to join the social meeting.
Hosted by: Sue Ishaq, MSE, and finacially supported by the University of Maine Institute of Medicine and the UMaine Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Committee.
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health. Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. This speaker series explores the way that microbes connect public policy, social disparities, and human health, as well as the ongoing research, education, policy, and innovation in this field.
Dr. Landon J. Getz (He/Him, PhD) is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry within the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Landon is a Gay/Queer man and a molecular bacteriologist specializing in bacterial genetics and phage-host interactions. Dr. Getz is a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellow and the recipient of the inaugural GSK-EPIC Convergence Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto. Dr. Getz’s work is currently focused on the collaborative and competitive relationship between bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, and their bacterial hosts. Primarily, this work has revolved around the mechanisms that bacteria, and their integrated bacteriophages, defend themselves from incoming phage infection through anti-phage defence. Landon is an LGBTQ+ advocate and works to enhance the justice and belonging of Queer and Trans folks in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Most recently, Landon founded the Pride in Microbiology Network along with Dr. Edel Pérez-López and Dr. Bruno Francesco Rodrigues de Oliveira. The Pride in Microbiology Network has over 200 international members, and has recently launched PiM Connections – a mentorship and professional development network connecting students and early career researchers with more seasoned mentors. Landon has a keen interest in the connections and overlaps of science and society, has written a number of commentaries on the topic. Landon is also an alumnus of the inaugural Youth Council of the Chief Science Advisor of Canada.
Summary reposted from the MSE newsletter, now hosted by AMI!Subscribe to the newletter or join the group here.
MSE recently hosted its 5th annual summit, this year dedicated to exploring the concept of Microbiome Stewardship. Microbiome Stewardship is a concept that is intended to provide guiding insights, articulate responsibilities, and suggest practices aimed at maintaining microbial biodiversity and microbiome functioning across microbial habitats, which, in turn, supports the health and well-being of humans, animals, plants, and ecosystems. The summit consisted of two days of presentations (webinars) and two days of virtual workshop discussions.
We opened with two days of webinars featuring 12 speakers from wide-ranging fields of expertise, all focused on how social or environmental conditions impact health and microbiomes. This included an introduction to the concept of microbiome stewardship and guiding principles for its implementation, the need for diversification of fecal microbiome donors for health interventions, degradation of waterways and microbial transfer, the industrialization of food systems and the rise of antimicrobial resistance, the use of too-vague population descriptors in microbiome science, integrating systems-level thinking in microbiology curricula, and working with Indigenous communities on microbiome research. The webinars sparked imaginative and thoughtful questions from the 200 attendees (nearly 300 registrants), and set the stage for the subsequent two days of workshops. We also shared a working draft of the Microbiome Stewardship Guiding Principles document with attendees, and welcomed feedback. We hope to submit that manuscript for peer review and publication soon.
Workshop attendance was by application, and restricted to 50 attendees across the two days, which focused on host and environmental microbiomes, respectively. For each workshop day, attendees self-organized into breakout rooms focusing on different disciplines or themes. Speakers, MSE and Microbiome Stewardship researchers, and attendees discussed the challenges and opportunities for their respective fields, what was needed to achieve more integration between research and education or policy, and how to incorporate the principles of stewardship into their respective research. These conversations helped realize existing areas of overlap between our work, and identify compatible expertise that was needed to explore these interdisciplinary research questions. Similar themes and challenges emerged across workshop days and discussion groups, highlighting opportunities to strengthen the microbiome stewardship and paths to implementation.
The live sessions were recorded to accommodate our global audience who were unable to make the session, and can be viewed here. While the workshops were not recorded, the thoughtful discourse from throughout the seminar and workshops will be used to inform that guiding principles publication-in-development, as well as future publications and output over the next 2-3 years from the collaborations which germinated during the breakout room sessions.
Events will be hosted January – December, 2025, on the last Wednesday of every month, 12:00 – 14:00 pm ET. Presented over Zoom.
After each talk, we will continue the discussions in an informal social meeting with MSE. All speakers and members of the audience are welcome to join the social meeting.
Hosted by: Sue Ishaq, MSE, and finacially supported by the University of Maine Institute of Medicine and the UMaine Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Committee.
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health. Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. This speaker series explores the way that microbes connect public policy, social disparities, and human health, as well as the ongoing research, education, policy, and innovation in this field.
Dr. Landon J. Getz (He/Him, PhD) is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry within the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Landon is a Gay/Queer man and a molecular bacteriologist specializing in bacterial genetics and phage-host interactions. Dr. Getz is a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellow and the recipient of the inaugural GSK-EPIC Convergence Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto. Dr. Getz’s work is currently focused on the collaborative and competitive relationship between bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, and their bacterial hosts. Primarily, this work has revolved around the mechanisms that bacteria, and their integrated bacteriophages, defend themselves from incoming phage infection through anti-phage defence. Landon is an LGBTQ+ advocate and works to enhance the justice and belonging of Queer and Trans folks in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Most recently, Landon founded the Pride in Microbiology Network along with Dr. Edel Pérez-López and Dr. Bruno Francesco Rodrigues de Oliveira. The Pride in Microbiology Network has over 200 international members, and has recently launched PiM Connections – a mentorship and professional development network connecting students and early career researchers with more seasoned mentors. Landon has a keen interest in the connections and overlaps of science and society, has written a number of commentaries on the topic. Landon is also an alumnus of the inaugural Youth Council of the Chief Science Advisor of Canada.
The Ishaq Lab 