Microbiology faculty and staff gathered with their College of Science peers on April 2 for a town hall with university President Jayathi Murthy and Provost Roy Haggerty. Some of the topics under discussion were efforts to improve student retention and the opportunities for research in the nearly completed supercomputing facility, the Jen-Hsun Huang and Lori Mills Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex. The town hall also provided an opportunity for faculty to highlight their current research with a poster session. The posters displayed by Microbiology faculty and their lab members highlighted the breadth of research being undertaken across the department.

Topics of the posters on display at the COS Town Hall:

David Lab: Maude David, Caroline Hernández, Kevin Rice, Allissa Van Steenis, Katie Chiodo, Connor Goodrich

“The David Lab studies the microbiota-gut-brain axis and leverages deep learning to understand how the microbiome interacts with its host and the environment.”

Giovannoni Lab: Qi Chen, Fabian Wittmers, Ben Daniels, Steve Giovannoni

“The dark metabolism of microbial diversity – an unexplored frontier”

PHIn Lab: Laila Brubaker, Stephen Atkinson

"An ex vivo assay for characterizing chemical inhibition of myxozoan spore attachment to the fish host."

PHIn Lab: Sascha Hallett, Nilanjana Das, Stephen Atkinson, Sarah Bjork, Aimee Reed

"Disease dynamics of an emerging pathogen of salmonids in Oregon's hatcheries."

Pokorzynski Lab: Nick Pokorzynski

“Control of RNA polymerase abundance promotes virulence gene transcription in Salmonella”

Rowe Lab: Hannah Rowe, Matthew Williams

“Bacterial modulation of redox stress alters environmental survival of Pneumococcus and influenza A virus”

Sharpton Lab: Tom Sharpton, Ed Davis, Kristin Kasschau, Emilee Lance, Dakota Roth

“Microbiome analysis Co-Pilot”