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Dr. Sihan Bu Sihan is a Research Associate/Postdoc in the lab working on the 16s libraries preparations on Kenai fish gut samples and microbial community analyses. She earned a Ph.D. in Human Nutrition from Michigan State University in 2023. She investigated the mediating role of infant gut microbiota in the relationship between infant feeding patterns and infant neurodevelopmental outcomes during her PhD study. Dr. Bu earned a M.S. in Human Nutrition from Michigan State University and a B.S. in Food Hygiene and Nutrition from Jilin Medical University, China. |
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Holly Valentine
Holly Valentine is the manager of the Stickleback Stock Center. |
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Sarah Pasqualetti
Sarah is investigating microbial interactions that can enhance or inhibit microplastic degrading abilities using microbes isolated from the gut of the three spine stickleback. Sarah earned her Bachelor’s of Science in Molecular and Cell Biology and a minor in Chemistry from the University of Connecticut. Before attending UConn, she worked with Essilor of America to develop polar laminates for eyeglasses by studying the color changes and integrity throughout the production process.
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Caroline Vieira Da Silva Caroline was born in Brazil and earned her B.S. in Molecular Biology from the University of Tampa in 2020. During her undergrad, she was granted the SURF and URI grants, in which she was studying exosomes from umbilical cord stem cells. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in the Molecular and Cell Biology Department with a concentration in Microbiology. She is pursuing her passion for extracellular vesicles and her thesis focuses on the characterization and identification of outer membrane vesicles and the surface layer protein as potential pathogenic factors of Aeromonas veronii strain HM21.
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Kayleigh O'Keefe
Kayleigh is currently an undergraduate at UConn, pursuing a double-major degree in Molecular and Cell Biology combined with Sociology. She is planning to graduate in 2024, after which she would like to potentially enter the dental field. As she continues her undergraduate degree, she hopes to investigate correlations between sociology and cell biology within her research.
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Jolie Atwood Jolie Atwood is a Molecular and Cell Biology and Pathobiology student at the University of Connecticut. She will be graduating in the spring of 2025. |
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Rebecca Kramer-Earley Rebecca Kramer-Earley is a UConn undergraduate who is currently majoring in Molecular and Cell Biology with a minor in Human Rights. She is planning to graduate in December of 2024 and potentially pursue a medical degree afterwards |
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Dr. Kat Milligan-McClellan, Principal Investigator Dr. Kat has broad expertise in microbiology, including pathogenic and symbiotic microbes. As an undergrad and as a lab technician, she helped describe environmental and genetic factors that regulate toxin production in Staphylococcus aureus. For her PhD thesis she identified and characterized genes and their products necessary for an obligate intracellular parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, to establish infections in host brains. She expanded her exploration of host-microbe interactions during her postdoctoral training at the University of Oregon, where, working with a team of talented research associates, undergraduate students, and fellow postdoctoral fellows, she established stickleback as a model to examine how host genetic background contributes to host immune responses to intestinal microbiota. She was trained in host immune response to microbes, and examined how the host background contributes to the ability of the host to shape the intestinal microbiota. During these studies, she built collaborations across two institutions and three universities, and mentored ten undergraduate and graduate students. Dr. Kat’s long term career goal is to combine the experiences she had as an Inupiaq earning a PhD and the expertise she gained in multiple research fields into a flourishing career as a mentor and professor. Kat was raised in a remote community above the Arctic Circle that was 80% Alaskan Native. She was the first person in her village to earn a PhD in biological sciences and the first Indigenous student at UW-Madison to earn a PhD in Microbiology. While in school, she was struck by the scarcity of females and people from historically excluded backgrounds in science. As a result, she is committed to making the academic research field a welcoming environment for minorities.Dr. Kat is an active member in both scientific and Native communities. She taught Alaskan Native games to students and community members at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Oregon (UO). At UW-Madison she was active in the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) and Wunk Sheek. At UO she was active in the Native American Strategies group, a group of faculty, staff and students that shaped Indigenous issues on campus. She worked extensively with the Diversity Director and the UO Native American community, staff, students and faculty to develop a new program for recruiting Alaska Natives and Native Americans (AN/NA) into science (Alaska Oregon Research Training Alliance, AORTA). She collaborated with Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon to support an intense college preparation summer program (Bridge of the Gods Summer Academy, BOGSA). As an instructor for BOSGA, she taught Native American high school students Introduction to Microbiology for two weeks every summer to prepare them for the rigors of college and to show them that they can be successful in science classes. Dr. Kat continued to build relationships between the University of Oregon and the University of Alaska Anchorage, and between the UAA and the Alaskan Native/Native American community to recruit and support AN/NA students in science, technology, engineering and mathematical fields through ANSEP, Della Keats Health Sciences Summer Program, and UAA STEM day. Dr. Kat joined UConn in the midst of the pandemic, which has affected her ability to do outreach. However, she is active in the Native community on campus and is a member of the Native American Indigenous Studies within the Department of Social and Critical Inquiry. She teaches a class on Historically Excluded and Underrepresented Scientists in the fall and Host Associated Microbes in the spring. |