Department of Microbiology

June 2020:  This year we graduated 57 Microbiology majors and 143 BioHealth Sciences majors with Baccalaureate degrees, 3 Microbiology majors with Masters degrees and 1 with a Doctoral degree.  In a first ever experience, we are congratulating our graduates remotely, by video. We encourage our graduates to share their OSU experiences and photos of how they celebrated their graduation, and what they plan to do in the coming year.  We will post to our website, please send to [...]

May 21, 2020: Saving Atlantis, a feature documentary produced by OSU filmmakers tracks coral microbiologist Rebecca Vega Thurber and other OSU researchers, uncovering the causes and seeking solutions for the global decline of coral reef ecosystems, is now streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime.  Saving Atlantis. Coral reefs cover only 0.1 percent of the Earth’s surface, but they’re home to 25 percent of all marine species, and they’re being lost at an alarming rate. Pollution, overfishing and[...]

Nash’s ‘Radar O’Reilly’: Longtime building manager keeps watch over labs during campus shutdown
Cindy Fisher, building manager at Nash Hall -- Years at OSU: 39 --City of residence: Corvallis:      In Nash Hall, the Department of Microbiology has 30 labs spread over three floors. Decades’ worth of samples and specimens are housed in dozens of minus-80 degree C freezers throughout the building. In some cases, researchers’ entire careers depend on those frozen cultures. If a freezer suddenly malfunctioned, all would[...]

Sebastian Singleton, a first-year Ph.D. student in the Microbiology Department, has been awarded a fellowship in the OSU-PNNL Distinguished Graduate Research Program. Seb’s project, titled "Dining on plastic refuse: Uncovering mechanisms behind microbial degradation of plastics in municipal solid waste environments" aims to culture and identify plastic colonizing microbiota from terrestrial environments, and study their biochemical interactions with plastics with advanced systems biology technology that is available at PNNL. Working with OSU advisors Giovannoni and Sharpton, and co-advisor  Rob Egbert from the[...]

April 2, 2020:  A study that included the first-ever winter sampling of phytoplankton in the North Atlantic revealed cells smaller than what scientists expected, meaning commonly used carbon sequestration models may be over-optimistic.   The OSU research into the microscopic algae, part of NASA’s North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study, was published today in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal.  The findings are significant because the spring phytoplankton bloom in the North Atlantic “is probably the largest biological[...]

April 1, 2020:  Grace Deitzler was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and will investigate host-environment-microbiota interactions in honey bees.  She has been working with Dr. David and Dr. Sagili of the Honey Bee Lab characterizing the honey bee microbiome.  She will continue that work as well as the gut-brain axis research with Dr. David.  She is also involved with Seminarium to broaden connections between art and science.

February 14, 2020.  The  COS Awards ceremony presented Alex Beck, BHS Advisor, the 2020 Olaf Boedtker Award for Excellence in Academic Advising.  There was a large field of candidates for this award and the nominations come from students so it is quite an honor to be the recipient.  Congratulations Alex!