Next up in our Micro Biography series is Dr. Ned Walker, a University Distinguished Professor in MGI and Entomology who studies mosquito and tick-borne diseases. Read about his journey and research here: tinyurl.com/mrxthcxx

Former MSU president Teresa Woodruff has launched a new website and podcast focused on reproductive science and human health. We love to see members of the MSU community continuing to make science accessible and engaging for broader audiences. Check it out at repro101.com.

Congratulations to Dohun Pyeon, PhD @dpyeon.bsky.social, on being named an MSU Research Foundation Distinguished Professor! Pyeon recently led a team that discovered how HPV-positive tumors evade the immune system, a breakthrough that could help advance more effective cancer treatments.

Congratulations to MGI graduate student Danielle Gregory of the Manning/Dodd Lab for receiving the Sustainable Development Goals Poster Award at the ASM Microbe conference this past week! Great work!

Congratulations to MGI graduate students Kevin Santiago-Morales and Jessica Lysne who were awarded Dissertation Fellowships from the College of Natural Science and the Graduate School! 👏 Read more here: tinyurl.com/4cps8jza

MGI graduate student Soledad Soverina has been awarded the prestigious Barnett Rosenberg Endowed Research Assistantship! Her research focuses on immune responses in the lungs to M. abscessus, a bacterium that can cause serious respiratory infections. Read more: tinyurl.com/4mxc5d4j

Congratulations to MGI MSU Foundation Distinguished Professor Dohun Pyeon on his induction into the AAAS! Dr. Pyeon was recognized for his research into HPV-associated cancers. Read more here: tinyurl.com/yc3x65yz @dpyeon.bsky.social

MGI Professor @chrisadami.bsky.social will be speaking at the virtual Ellison Insights Forum at 10 am on June 12th. The theme of the event is how AI could accelerate cancer drug discovery and treatment. To hear his talk, you can register for free at emila.org/insights.

Congratulations to MGI grad student Emma Bush, a recipient of the inaugural @msunatsci.bsky.social SMART Fellowship! Emma uses next-gen sequencing to explore how chromatin structure shapes antibody gene recombination in B cells—work that is essential to understanding adaptive immunity.

Three graduate students working in MGI labs have been awarded prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowships which will provide three years of support to these outstanding young researchers. Read more about Elena Renshaw, Alice Walker, and Bryce Waller: tinyurl.com/4v5cc5fs

Grace Semaan, an MGI graduate student working in Dr. Jim Moran's lab, has won the Alpha Lambda Delta Maria Leonard Graduate Fellowship. This $7000 award will support her graduate studies & professional development.

Congratulations to two members of the Olive Lab on winning major awards at the MSUCOM Research Day Conference. Mahima Thapa won 2nd place oral presentation, and Michael Wischer won 2nd place poster presentation out of 182 presentations at the conference!

A new 'Microbial Profile' from from the Quinn Lab explores D. trenchii, algae with powerful, heat-resistant properties that are key to understanding how coral reefs adapt to warming waters. 🪸 🐠

Last week, we came together to celebrate the remarkable career of Dr. Bob Hausinger at his Valedictory Seminar and reception. It was a pleasure to welcome former lab members and colleagues from across the decades to honor his lasting impact on the field of Metalloenzymology.

Congratulations are in order! Jared Godfrey was recently awarded a 3-year Kirschstein fellowship from the NIH. His research focuses on understanding how the immune system balances protection and inflammation in the lungs. Read more here: tinyurl.com/5yp7kxst

MGI Asst Prof Elizabeth Heath-Heckman has won TWO Scialog awards from the RCSA. Her projects are entitled "Conserved Epitranscriptomic Signatures of Stress" and "Identifying Mechanisms of Social Resiliency to Heat Stress." Congratulations!

MGI Asst Prof Phillip Delekta spoke about the impact of prerequisite knowledge retention on success in Introductory Microbiology at last week's MSU Spring TALKS event. This is a topic he is studying in collaboration with Katie Krueger of the Biological Science Program.

Congratulations to MGI's HR Director, Christine VanDeuren, who is celebrating a career milestones of 30 years at MSU! We are fortunate to have such a dedicated and knowledgeable member in our department.

Congratulations to MGI graduate student Danielle Gregory on winning the third place poster award in the Career Pathways section of the Association of Public Health Laboratories @aphl.org annual meeting.

Caps, gowns, and lots of smiles. This weekend we celebrated our Class of 2026 🎓and all of the hard work that got them here. Congratulations!!!

Some disease-causing bacteria once knew how to swim but lost that ability as they adapted to infect mammals. Jeannette Farnham, an MGI grad student in the Crosson Lab, studies why they kept *some* of the swimming genes and how those genes may help bacteria infect cells.

MGI’s Dohun Pyeon spoke with WOOD Radio about his team’s discovery of how HPV-related cancers evade the immune system—and how to reveal them—opening doors to new treatments. Listen here: tinyurl.com/9wsceryc

Congratulations to MGI Graduate Student Bryce Waller for receiving an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! Bryce works in Greg Bonito's lab developing sustainable biomaterials using fungi.

Adam Kibiloski, an MGI graduate student in Rob Abramovitch's Lab, is working to better understand how Mycobacterium tuberculosis metabolism changes in acidic environments such as those found in the human body.

MGI graduate student Emily Perez, of the Crosson Lab, is studying how bacteria sense and respond to the world around them because these attributes can be used to control their growth. It is especially important for animal and human pathogens such as the one she studies, Brucella.

MGI Assistant Professor Scott Sherrill-Mix has been creating videos for the American Society for Microbiology helping to explain basic statistics concepts. Here's part 1 about using Contingency Tables. asm.org/videos/decod... Great work, Dr. Sherrill-Mix!

Congratulations to MGI alum, Dr. Sergio Hernandez-Ortiz! His final paper from his PhD thesis research made the cover of the Journal of Bacteriology. Dr. Hernandez-Ortiz is now doing postdoctoral work at Duke University where he's studying halophilic archaea. journals.asm.org/journal/jb

Copper mining waste called "stamp sands" has contaminated soils along Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula for over a century — and yet quaking aspen trees are still growing there. Mashal Copperman is an MGI graduate student in the Lebeis Lab investigating how this works.

MGI's @waterslab.bsky.social hosted a booth at the MSU Science Festival! They made art using fluorescent E. coli - In the lab, they use the fluorescent proteins as tracers for cellular sorting and imaging. But as postdoc @micahferrell.bsky.social said, "Sometimes we just want to have fun with them!"

So proud of our undergraduates who presented their research at the MGI Undergraduate Research Showcase yesterday. Loved seeing student and faculty deep in conversation about their work.

Satya Kulkarni is a MGI DVM-PhD dual-degree student in the Contag and Hardy labs. He engineers bacteria that live inside mammalian cells as quasiorganelles, or organelle-like structures, that can change the way those cells behave.

MGI's Rudolph Hugh Endowed Professor Sean Crosson gave a talk at this weekend's "Classes Without Quizzes" event entitled "Many Microbes, One Health: Bacteria at the interface of animal, plant, and human health." Read more about the event here: natsci.msu.edu/alumni-frien...

Soil is full of bacteria—some help plants stay healthy, and others can cause disease. In his research, MGI grad student Alex Demetros of the Lebeis Lab is studying how a beneficial bacterium can protect plants from a harmful one.

Last week, we came together to celebrate the extraordinary impact and legacy of Dr. Vilma Yuzbasiyan-Gurkan. Thank you to the colleagues and former students who shared reflections, research, and memories in her honor.

Congratulations to MGI graduate student Ira Zibbu @coolscootre.bsky.social of the Barrick Lab on winning the Graduate Student Excellence Award from the SMBE @official-smbe.bsky.social

At this weekend’s MI branch ASM meeting, MGI students earned top honors—4 first-place awards! Congrats to Maddy Quinlan and Jeannette Farnham (oral & poster presentations) and to Drew Johnson and Marissa Malleck (undergrad poster awards). 🎉

Congratulations to MGI Professor Dohun Pyeon on his election as a 2025 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science! Dr. Pyeon was recognized for his research in human papillomavirus and associated cancers. tinyurl.com/yc3x65yz

MGI graduate student James Zieba of the Sherrill‑Mix Lab is developing new veterinary clinical assays inspired by the rapid testing innovations that emerged during the 2020 COVID pandemic.

MGI postdoctoral researcher Dr. Aathmaja Anandhi Rangarajan @aathmaja.bsky.social will be presenting a talk to Biology on Tap on April 2nd entitled "Swim Alone or Stick Together: How Bacteria Decide Their Lifestyle." Join her at 7 pm on 4/2 at the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy!

MGI doctoral candidate Sarah Gonzalez Henao has been selected for the NASA Early Career Collaboration Award, a competitive fellowship that supports early career scientists working in astrobiology. Congratulations and bon voyage, Sarah! Read more here: tinyurl.com/3hahv6dx

This Tuesday, Ihika Lagisetty from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center joined us to present a seminar entitled "Building the Future of Genetic Counseling." Thank you, Ihika!

This week's Work in Progress seminars were given by MGI graduate students Sole Soverina of the Olive lab and Hazel McGuffin of the Parent lab.

This week's Work in Progress seminars were given by MGI graduate students Kathleen Sotelo of the Barrick Lab and Jessica Hodgkins of the Milbrath Lab.

MGI Prof. Ned Walker visited Rwanda to launch a new Gates Foundation–supported project using drones, AI, & community partners to fight malaria linked to agricultural expansion. The work focuses on smarter land and water management to reduce mosquito breeding in farming areas.

This week's MGI Research Seminar was presented by Asst. Prof. Meghan Milbrath of MSU's dept. of entomology. She spoke about bacterial brood diseases in honey bees. Thank you, Dr. Milbrath!

MGI Professor Christoph Adami (@chrisadami.bsky.social) has a new article out in npj Complexity which addresses the question of whether we can use AI to promote a more cooperative society. Read more here: tinyurl.com/3cjxujmm

Ira Zibbu (@coolscootre.bsky.social) and Tyler de Jong are MGI graduate students working in the Barrick Lab. Both of them do research related to the Long-Term Evolution Experiment - and they both presented Work in Progress seminars this week.

Happy Birthday, Long-Term Evolution Experiment!!!

Happy 38th birthday to the #LTEE! #BOTD in 1988. Keep on evolving! #science #evolution #microbiology

This week's MGI seminar was a promotion seminar given by Dr. Kaz Kashefi. His talk was entitled, "Life at the Limits: Extremophiles as a Gateway to Student-Drive Scientific Discovery." Thank you for a great talk, Dr. Kashefi!