Catie was a senior honors scholar graduating in 202. She is now working on her PhD in Microbiology at Virginia Tech

Ryan graduated in 2020 after several year in the lab investigating the role of TCSs in the ability of H. pylori to modify gene expression as the result of binding host gastric cells.  Among his numerous hobbies (including home chemistry projects!), Ryan is a dedicated 70’s Funk band aficionado!

Olivia Tran graduated in 2020 and has completed a medical masters degree and is applying to medical schools. Olivia’s project examined various arsS mutants’ abilities to modify gene expression upon challenge with acidic pH environments. She only recently gave up her lifelong desire to be a circus clown and opted for med school. We think she couldn’t find Clown shoes she liked!

Danielle graduated in 2020 after several years in our lab. Asked the most important thing she learned in our lab; “You can’t do good molecular biology without a hammer” Danielle is now crushing medical school at University of Virginia!!

Justin is a senior biology major considering MD/Ph.D study.  He joined the lab as a freshman while involved in the HHMI Phage Hunters Program.  In our lab, he’s involved in studies of a gene duplication event seen in some Asian strains of H. pylori and some genomic studies of some cagA Negative H. pylori strains.  While Justin may seem like a mild-mannered W&M student, on the weekends, his crazy alternate persona shines through and he becomes  Justin Reed; Polka Band Leader and Swing dance instructor!

Hermella is a junior, 2nd-year researcher and TA for Phage lab. Hermella is involved in studies immunoprecipitated a histidine kinase from both activating and non-activating conditions to examine post-translational modifications beyond phosphorylation. She says she wants to go to medical school, but in reality, she is looking for a career in stand-up comedy!

Sara is a junior and veteran of Phage Lab! She is involved in gene expression changes associated with arsS mutation. She tells everyone she is going to medical school. But the truth is, she really wants a musical career as a tuba player in a German Om Pah Band!

Elizabeth is another junior, phage lab veteran. In our lab, she is trying to express an epitope-tagged version of a response regulator protein in H. pylori so we can purify the protein under various environmental conditions and use MS to examine post-translation modifications. She would have us believe she is just another pre-medical student, but we all know her true passion involves playing the left wing for the Washington Capitals hockey team!

Aaron Marcum is a junior biology major and returning for year two in the lab.  His project involves creating constitutively kinase active mutants of a histidine kinase.  Although Aaron tells everyone he wants to go to medical school after graduation, we think his true calling is giraffe wrangling!

Anna Xystros is a senior researcher in our lab.  Her project involves some genomics from strains of Helicobacter pylori that naturally lack a crucial virulence locus.  In her leisure time, Anna collects vintage disco albums.

Jerry Lopez-Sanchez is a sophomore researcher. His project involves the effects of functional mutants of the acid-sensing histidine kinase, ArsS. In addition to his love of microbiology and infectious diseases, Jerry is a huge fan of Greenlandic Folk songs and hopes to produce an album of that genre one day!

Sanjana Challa is a sophomore, 2nd-year student. Her project involves co-immunoprecipitation of a membrane-bound histidine kinase to identify partner proteins via MS. Sanjana’s truest passion is writing romance novels under her pen name: “Cuddles McNamara”

Lab Alumni 2018-2006

Jiajia Chen graduated in 2018 and is now in a graduate program in bioinformatics at Boston University.

Jessica Higgins graduated in 2018, working for a year, and applying to medical schools.

Kexin Fan graduated in December 2017.  She is currently in the Microbiology and Immunology Graduate program at Imperial College in London UK

Anna Kenan graduated in 2018 and is working in a research lab in Durham NC for the year before applying to MD/Ph.D. programs for 2019

Arial Eclipse graduated in 2018.  She is currently working as a paramedic and planning to apply to Physicians Assistant Graduate programs for 2019!

Maran Ilanchezhian;  Graduated in 2018.  Now in a two-year post-bac research position at NIH investigating childhood cancers before applying to medical schools.

Danielle Horridge is a 2017 graduate who began as a freshman working on HP in our lab.  She also received a prestigious fellowship from The American Society for Microbiology to support her research. She completed a senior honors thesis and presented her research at Microbe 2017 in New Orleans.  In the fall she will begin medical school at Wake Forest University

Shiva Armbardar is a 2017 graduate of our lab!  He will begin medical school at the Eastern Virginia School of Medicine this fall!

Jack Villani graduated in 2016 after three years of HP research in our lab. He went “across the pond” to a graduate program at The London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene to pursue his dream of graduate work in microbiology and epidemiology. (Yeah, he hates this picture of him, but it’s my favorite!) He is now in the IRTA program at NIH.

Rachel Durrwacter graduated from our lab in 2016 and is living her dream as a veterinary student at UPenn.  A DVM wasn’t good enough, she had to go for the VMD!!

Allison Begley was our high school senior who graduated from The Governor’s High School for Science and Technology in 2016.  As a high school senior, after school, she did some remarkable genetics on HP including expressing an epitope tag in HP and altering the phase status of a gene.  She is currently in the School of Nursing at Rutgers University

Olivia Awate graduated in 2016.  She is currently in a Neisseria research lab at Virginia Commonwealth University working on her Ph.D. in Microbiology in the lab of Dr. Cynthia Cornelissen on Neisseria

Catherine Acio joined as a freshman and graduated in 2016.  Her work in the lab, including her Honors Thesis, resulted in two publications!  We miss her and big sister Abby badly, but our loss is the MD/Ph.D (MSTP) program at U. Rochester’s gain!

Veronica Gray graduated and is currently doing an NIH fellowship for a couple of years before going on to medical school. We really miss her in the lab, bu man, do we miss her in the bacteriophage lab! As of Fall 2017, she is a student in EVMS!

Abby Acio has finished graduate work in forensic science at Penn State!  We still miss her and know she will help solve many crimes!  She is currently working in microbiology at Syracuse

 

Anthony Bennici is currently in an NIH IRTA post-bac program for two years before going to medical school!  We miss his project and miss him sorely!!

Yusheng Qin graduated in 2015. He is now a tech at Boston’s Children’s Hospital in the Immunology Department and is still working on his manuscript.

Kim Bond graduated in 2015 and is taking a year to work before applying to medical school.

 

Monique (Mo) Bennett, the “Queen of Signal Transduction” in the lab, successfully defended her masters thesis July 16 2014 on her two year project on the poly C tract in the arsS gene of H. pylori as well as looking and genetic diversity of H. pylori isolates from different regions of the same patient stomach.  Her next stop; the Ph.D program in Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology Dept. at Vanderbilt University!

Alexis Bennett graduated in May 2014.   She completed graduate school at Boston University and is now in Drexel Medical School.

Eva Humes and K-Ay Lee both graduated in May 2014.  Eva is working for a bit before going on to medical school.  K-Ay is job hunting in the DC area

Dialra Kiran graduated in May 2014 and is currently in a combined DVM/Ph.D program at Colorado State University.

Kendra Jackson graduated in May 2014 after 4 full years in our lab! She completed med school medical school at the University of Virginia! She is currently a resident in Charlotte NC (and we miss her!)

Larry Zhu graduated in 2014 also and is currently exploring the job market and a career in stand-up comedy!

Amy Bredehoft graduated in the summer of 2013 and is taking a gap year prior to applying to graduate programs, no doubt in microbiology!!

Mily Nguyen graduated in the summer of 2013 and is now in a Masters of International Health program at Tulane University.  The program required her to join the Peace Corps to complete the program.  That’s why she chose the Tulane program!! 

Girolama Bui graduated in 2013 and will be pursuing a public health career and is now working with Ashoka. 

Katherine Dove graduated in 2013 and will be attending medical school at Eastern Virginia Medical school in Norfolk (hopefully soon to be re-named “The College of William and Mary Medical School”

   Sam Sessou graduated in 2013 and will attend medical school at MCV/VCU in Richmond (and plans on coming by our house to do laundry on weekends)   

 Dan Sylvester is a member of the class of 2013 and in 2015 began medical school at Boston University.

 

Amelia Tyler graduated in 2013 and is now in veterinary school at Virginia Tech; her lifelong dream!!

Vivian Cooper graduated in 2013 and has moved to Chicago and will be attending Rosalind Franklin Medical School there.  She and Sam Harvey (class of 2012) were married on July 25, 2014.  She and Catherine Acio are co-first authors on a paper in J. Bact in 2014!

Sam Harvey completed his BS and honors thesis in May 2012.  He will stay in our lab this summer as a Beckman Scholar then he enters the combined MD/Ph.D program at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Will Kaplan graduated in 2012 and is entering a Ph.D. program in medicinal chemistry at the University of Michigan.

Jackie Corely graduated in 2011.  She and Justin were married that summer and moved to Chicago where Jackie is in Rush Medical school.  Update.  Jackie is now a neurosurgery resident at Duke University

Dan Hallinger was a Master’s Student of the Class of 2010. He now works for a shadowy government organization “biologist”. He is sorely missed. To all of us, he was a noble scholar and a fine sportsman.

Stephen Cole is in Veterinary school at UPenn.  He is considering the combined VMD/Ph.D program.  Seriously, our lab is just not the same without Stephen (it’s quieter and cleaner but not necessarily more fun!)

Hillary Whelan graduated in 2012 and is going to medical school at Penn State!

Vanessa Quinlivan-Repasi finished her master’s degree in the summer of 2011 and is now in a Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins University

Bert Cortina graduated in 2011 and is in the MD/Ph.D program at the University of Virginia

Lauren O’Hagan after presenting her work at the 2010 ASM meeting in San Diego, Lauren began her first year as a dental student at UConn! All that time in the ceramics lab here at W&M will really pay off!

Katelyn Burgess (Burge).  Class of 2009.  Burge has moved from Manhattan where she worked in a nephrology research lab at Columbia University.  She is now in Emory University Medical School.  Now a pediatrics resident at Northwestern University Medical Center

Kristin Davis, class of 2009, is working in Sequoia Nat’l Park and will be applying to Ph.D. programs soon

Sophia Gayek graduated in 2009 and entered the interdisciplinary graduate program at Vanderbilt University!  Vandy is going to have to start paying me again if I keep sending them our best students!

John Miller, class of 2009, is accepted into the MD program at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical school, but his immediate plans center around season tix to the Phillies!

Jennifer DeCuir (2006 or 2007) finished year two of the combined MD/Ph.D. program (MSTP) at Columbia University in the summer of 2007.   We don’t know what lab she’ll end up in, but check back and we’ll let you know (we do know that it will be epidemiology related!)

Christopher Ford (B.S. 2007, MA 2007.) is in the Ph.D. program in Biological Sciences and Public Health at Harvard University.  Chris is working on Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the lab of Dr. Sarah Fortune for his dissertation work.  His work in our lab was recently published.  To see the abstract, click here.  He and Dan Weinberger will be at all the Red Sox home games

Kenny W. DeFontes III completed the MD program at Johns Hopkins University.  I’m certain Kenny will end up as an infectious disease physician or a gastroenterologist; after all those years working on Helicobacter pylori, what else would he do!

Jessica Nelson (aka Saba Nelson to a few close friends!!) did the NIH post-bac program for one year.   Saba is enrolled in a  Ph.D. program in Neurobiology at Yale University.  She is in Daniel Colon-Ramos’ lab.  Her work examines the mechanisms of axon arborization in C. elegans.  Her work while here at W&M landed her on a paper published in August 2008, check it out here.

Hillay Schwab worked for an endodontist in Richmond and began VCU dental school in fall 2008!

 

Courtney St. Clair is in the Ph.D. program in the Microbiology Department at Emory University working on the Measles Virus.  She’s hoping to break into the CDC while she’s in Atlanta!

 Cat Paules is pursuing her MD at the University of Nebraska.  We always knew Cat was a Corn Husker at heart!!  Cat’s work was recently published; click here for the abstract.

 James Swetnam is working in a structural biology lab at NYU medical for a couple of years before applying to graduate school!

Alex Sledd is in the combined MD/MPH program at Tulane University in New Orleans.  If you see her wearing beads around Mardi Gras, be sure to ask how she got them!  See you on Bourbon Street Alex!!

 Robert Simmons (2007) has left the country!  He is back in St. Petersburg Russia studying and working for a year before applying to graduate schools in the area of evolutionary biology.  You can always remember Rob’s birthday because it is the same as mine (and the same as George W. Bush – man! don’t we hate to admit that we share anything in common with him!!)

Cara Wilder graduated in May 2006 and finished a Ph.D. program in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Oregon State University in 2011(?).  She is a postdoc at the American Type Culture Collection

Amina Egal-Roble is another 2006 graduate from our lab.  Amina was awarded a Fullbright Fellowship for 2006-2007.  She will be working in Senegal and studying the interactions between AIDS and nutrition.  Amina will begin graduate school at Oxford University in the fall of 2007.

Jonathan Snider finished in 2006 as well.  He finished medical school at the University of Michigan.  He liked it there so much, that he stayed on for his residency in neurology (oh, the straight lines there!!)

Jeff Burket has now finished medical school at the University of Virginia and is a 2nd Lt. in the US Army.   He and Lauren are now married and have two children!!

Robert Pitts is another 2006 class member.  Robert spent the summer of 2006 in Buenas Aires Argentina studying Chagas Disease.  Shortly after that, he did his Fullbright Fellowship to Zimbabwe doing research on Group B Streptococcal disease in neonates.  He then worked at NIH for a year.  Robert entered UC San Francisco med school in 2008.

George Liechti finally completed his MS degree!  He was two years late, but on July 30, 2007, he successfully defended his thesis.  Next, finishing the manuscript for publication!   He has already begun his Ph.D. program in the Microbiology department at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  He is still working on Helicobacter pylori!!  He is in Joanna Goldberg‘s lab there.