Professor Jack A Gilbert earned his Ph.D. from Unilever and Nottingham University, UK in 2002, and received his postdoctoral training at Queens University, Canada. From 2005-2010 he was a senior scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK; and from 2010-2018 he was Group Leader for Microbial Ecology at Argonne National Laboratory, a Professor of Surgery, and Director of The Microbiome Center at University of Chicago. In 2019 he moved to University of California San Diego, where he is a Professor in Pediatrics and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Associate Vice Chancellor for Marine Science, and Director of both the Microbiome and Metagenomics Center and the Microbiome Core Facility. Dr. Gilbert uses molecular analysis to test fundamental hypotheses in microbial ecology.

Dr. Sonny Lee, PhD., Assistant Professor at Kansas State University, is an integrative microbiologist, with his work grounded in the field of microbiology, ecology and molecular biology with application to promote pro-health in human host, agricultural and the environment. His research relies heavily on bioinformatics, microbiological and molecular techniques to elucidate the mechanism of microbial populations in the contribution to the well-being of the host. His lab investigates the diversity and mechanism of the microbial population by looking at the microbiome as a whole holobiont, while using a reductionist approach in elucidating the role microbial populations play in maintaining the homeostasis of the microbiome.

His lab website is here.

Dr. Stephan van Vliet is a nutrition scientist with metabolomics expertise in the Center for Human Nutrition Studies at Utah State University. Dr. Stephan van Vliet earned his PhD in Kinesiology as an ESPEN Fellow from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received training at the Washington University in St Louis School of Medicine and Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. van Vliet’s research is performed at the nexus of agricultural and human health. He routinely collaborates with farmers, ecologists, and agricultural scientists to study critical linkages between sustainable agriculture, the nutrient density of food, and human health. His work has been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Scientific Reports, the Journal of Nutrition, and the Journal of Physiology.

His Faculty profile is here.

Dr. Emily Vogtmann is an Earl Stadtman Investigator in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology & Genetics in the National Cancer Institute. She received her B.S. in biochemistry and molecular biology and B.A. in Spanish from Michigan State University, M.P.H. in international health epidemiology from the University of Michigan, and Ph.D. in epidemiology in 2013 from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Vogtmann’s research focuses on the association between the human microbiome and cancer risk and the evaluation of methods for collection, storage, and processing of samples and data for study of the human microbiome.

Dr. Erica Hartmann, PhD., Associate Professor at Northwestern University. Dr. Erica Marie Hartmann is an environmental microbiologist interested in the interaction between anthropogenic chemicals and microorganisms, as well as bio-inspired mechanisms for controlling microbial communities.

Dr. Davida Smyth, PhD., is a Full Professor at Texas A&M University – San Antonio. She received her Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Dublin, Trinity College, Ireland, and completed her postdoctoral training at New York Medical College, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and New York University. She has served as an Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Natural Sciences in Mercy College’s School of Health and Natural Sciences, an Assistant Research Scientist in Richard Novicks lab at NYU Langone Medical Center, an Adjunct Lecturer for the online Masters in Bioinformatics program at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and an Assistant Professor of Biology at New York City College of Technology (NYCCT). She is an external committee member for Mercy Colleges Adjunct Academy component of their Inclusive Excellence Project and Peer-Led Team Learning Program for Biology, Chemistry, and Psychology students. In 2019, she was invited to the steering committee of the Research Experiences in Microbiomes Network (REMNet) of CUNY and became a Co-PI in 2020. Her research focuses on epidemiology of microbes in wastewater, and she is deeply committed to improving STEM education with integrated social impacts, such as her course on “How the Toilet Changed the World” about the role and impact of sanitation on our society and about the ongoing and future challenges associated with both access to toilets and sustainable toilet design.

This talk will focus on how microbes in our built environment can tell us much about the biological and chemical processes occurring. From their transmission through the air and their accumulation in our wastewater, we can learn much about the health of our communities, at different levels of scale and over time. Using novel sampling techniques and next generation sequencing we’re studying the microbes in our classroom air, those present in the soils around our campus, and in our city’s wastewater to determine the prevalence of pathogens as well as antibiotic resistance.

Her lab website is here; they research microbiology, sustainability, pedagogy, and inclusion.

Dr. Kelly K. Baker, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Environmental Health at the State University of New York Buffalo School of Public Health, and Director of the Center for Climate Change and Health Equity research. She conducts One Health focused eco-epidemiology studies in the US and globally that identify practical intervention strategies that can prevent transmission of enteric viruses, bacteria, and parasites between humans, animals, and the environment. Her funded research includes the development and testing of rapid diagnostics as well as projects like PATHOME, which develop virtual laboratories that can model the impact of different global development strategies on enteric disease burden. These transdisciplinary studies use pathogen diversity in children, animals, and the environment as means for identifying which living conditions, alone or in combination, best contribute to a decline in disease burden in high transmission settings. This evidence can then be used by policy makers and practitioners to select high impact investments.

Her Faculty page is here.

Mary Coughter is a PhD Candidate in Integrative Life Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University under the advisory of Dr. Rima Franklin. She also holds her master’s degree in Biology at VCU, and her bachelor’s at Virginia Tech in Environmental Science. Located in Richmond, Virginia, her current research takes place in the James River, a huge resource of food, water, and recreation in the area as well as a tributary to the Chesapeake bay. Here she examines the spread of antibiotic resistance in bacteria and their genes in these public waterways, looking at different communities of bacteria as resistance reservoirs – both the water column and riverine biofilms. Based in a city historically known for redlining communities and where environmental stressors and adverse health impacts have been observed along those lines, she’s very interested in exploring if antibiotic prescription rates along communities in the watershed follow similar patterns. 

Her student page is here.

Dr. Adriana Romero-Olivares, PhD., Assistant Professor at New Mexico State University. She is a soil microbiologist who works at the intersection of ecosystem ecology and evolution with an emphasis on fungi. She did her bachelor’s degree in Biology and master’s degree in Molecular Ecology at the Autonomous University of Baja California. Dr. Romero-Olivares completed her PhD in the University of California Irvine, where she investigated the effects of global warming on the soil fungal communities of boreal forests in Alaska and consequences for decomposition and the carbon cycle. As a postdoctoral scholar in the University of New Hampshire, she studied fungal communities in temperate forests in New England experiencing long-term simulated warming and nitrogen pollution and impacts to the cycling of carbon.

Dr. Aidee Guzman is an assistant professor at Stanford University in the Department of Biology in the Ecology and Environmental Science group. Her research group examines agroecological approaches that could harness biodiversity and ecosystem functioning for improved agricultural resilience. Specifically, they investigate how agricultural management impacts biotic interactions (e.g. between plants, insects, and soil microbes) across scales (e.g. shifts in community structure, cascading changes in ecosystem functioning). The overarching goal of her research program is to support farmers, especially those who are historically underserved, through research, education, and outreach that builds on their innovations and demonstrates ecological pathways to agricultural resilience. 

Lab website here.