After nearly 30 years on the UNC faculty, our friend and colleague Steve Clarke has decided to move to AbbVie in Worcester, MA, to pursue a new direction in his research on lupus. His lab is well known for many studies on B cell development, B cell tolerance, and loss of tolerance in disease. We … Read more

A UNC News article on PREP (Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program) includes comments from M&I alum Josh Hall (2008, Kawula lab), Director of this NIH-sponsored program. Three of the eight current PREP students are working in M&I labs this year: Hubaida Fuseini (Abel lab), Ninecia Scott (Braunstein lab), and Uduak Udoeyo (Miller lab). Prepped and ready … Read more

Congratulations to Ellen Perkowski, winner of the inaugural D. Gordon Sharp Graduate Innovator Award. As part of her dissertation work in Miriam Braunstein’s lab, Ellen has developed an innovative system for genome-wide identification of proteins exported by bacterial pathogens during infection. This system, which she has termed “Exported In vivo Technology (EXIT),” has a distinct … Read more

M&I graduate students Morgan Goheen and Martha Clark are featured in an Endeavors story on the complex issues related to iron supplements for treating malaria in Africa. See the article at the link below. Safer Supplements

Christopher Packey (Sartor lab) is currently a Gastroenterology and Hepatology Clinical Fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His dissertation title was “Disruption of complex enteric microbial communities and their mutualistic functions with the host contributes to the severity of common intestinal disorders and serves as a promising therapeutic target.” Lydia Roberts (Frelinger lab) completed … Read more

Rodrigo Gonzalez (Miller lab) successfully defended his dissertation in March 2014. Rodrigo’s research focused on understanding the earliest events that occur in the host after inoculation of the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis. In particular he was interested in identifying the mode of trafficking of Y. pestis from the inoculation site to the draining lymph node, … Read more

23 M&I graduate students completed their PhD work during this past academic year and are eligible to participate in the doctoral hooding ceremony at the Dean Smith Center on May 10. Below are short summaries of their doctoral work and current activities/plans. Melissa Anderson (Cotter lab) successfully defended her dissertation in August 2013. She showed … Read more

PLOS Pathogens features a new study from the Peggy Cotter’s group, who have been modeling bacterial inter-strain competition with Burkholderia. Their article on the role of contact-dependent inhibition in microbial biofilm communities is at the link below. Kind Discrimination and Competitive Exclusion Mediated by…

The UNC Graduate School has just announced that Kari Debbink, who did her graduate work in Ralph Baric’s lab, is one of the winners of the 2014 Impact Awards. The Impact Awards recognize outstanding graduate students in a wide variety of research areas and are privately funded each year through the Graduate Education Advancement Board. … Read more

A UNC News feature on M&I Professor Bruce Cairns, candidate for UNC Faculty Chair; see the article at the link below. Voting faculty will have the opportunity to choose Bruce during an online election this week, and you can refer to a voter’s guide (http://tinyurl.com/mucvv6o) with summaries of UNC committee candidates, including M&I’s Kristina Abel … Read more