Microbiology Virtual Week 2021

Dr. Svetlana Y. Folimonova received her PhD in Microbiology from Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia. She held a postdoctoral position at the S. R. Noble Foundation, Ardmore, Oklahoma and a postdoctoral position at the University of Florida, Citrus Research and Education ... Center, Lake Alfred, Florida. Dr. Folimonova was appointed Assistant Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, in 2012. In 2016, she was promoted to Associate Professor. Dr. Folimonova's research program focuses on viral and bacterial pathogens of citrus, with the main emphasis on Citrus tristeza virus (CTV) and Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus, a causal agent of citrus greening [Huanglongbing (HLB)]. Her primary research effort is concentrated on understanding the mechanisms of the infection process, host responses to the pathogens, improving methods of detection, and developing management strategies for these diseases. In 2020, Dr. Folimonova received a prestigious Syngenta Crop Protection Award from the American Phytopathological Society for her outstanding contributions to research on CTV and, specifically, for the elucidation of the mechanism of the CTV superinfection exclusion and for the research accomplishments on the development of the CTV-based vectors for expression of antimicrobial proteins for management of citrus greening. Dr. Folimonova also serves as Councilor for Plant Virology at the American Society for Virology.

Dr. Juliet Morrison is an Assistant Professor at the University of California Riverside. Her research combines immunological and virological methods with computational analysis to address questions at the host-pathogen interface. A major interest of the Morrison Lab is ... understanding how emerging and re-emerging viruses antagonize innate immune pathways to promote their replication. They also use virus-encoded interferon antagonists as tools to define previously unknown aspects of interferon signaling regulation. Another interest of Professor Morrison is using tissue deconvolution algorithms and immunological tools to study the dynamics of lung immune cell populations during influenza virus infections, and spleen and liver immune cell populations during dengue virus infections. Her goal is to translate these findings into host-targeted influenza and flavivirus therapeutics.

Dr. K. Leigh Greathouse is an Assistant Professor at Baylor University with appointments in Biology and Nutrition. Her background spands the fields of cancer biology, epidemiology, and nutrition. She recived her Ph.D. from the University of Texas and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center ... and her M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed her postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute in the laboratory of Curtis Harris, where she discovered a novel microbiome-gene interaction in lung cancer. The focus of her laboratory at Baylor is on elucidating the relationship between diet and the microbiome and its impact on cancer etiology and treatment. The goals of the Greathouse lab are focused on 1) delineating the dietary factors that modify the microbiome and its function, 2) developing microbial multi-omic classifiers that improve stratification of patients for cancer treatment, and 3) identify key functional pathways and mechanisms of microbiota-host communication. Dr. Greathouse has received multiple awards for her work, including a Merit Award from the National Insitutes of Health, Excellence in Research Leadership, and Rising Star at Baylor Univeristy. Most recenlty, she was awarded a career development award from Department of Defense to study the relationsihp between diet and the microbiome in colon cancer treatment response and toxicity. Ultimately, the goal of her lab is to discover dietary factors and microbial targets for the development of clinical tools to prevent cancer development, and reduce morbidity and mortality from colon cancer.

Dr. O'Hara has developed cutting edge next-gen sequencing-based technology for hospitals and spent five years commercializing this technology. She has led unprecedented, large-scale metagenomics work characterizing the microbiome of ambulances across the US, hospital ... environments, the urine microbiome, and SARS-CoV-2 samples. She completed a postdoc in health tech business at Cornell Tech (2018), a postdoc at Fordham University in Bioinformatics (2015), a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Stony Brook University (2014), and a BA at NYU (2005). Dr. O'Hara has published peer-reviewed articles in the fields of metagenomics, genomics, evolutionary biology and ecology in top ranked journals such as Molecular Ecology, Microbiome, and Evolution. Her work has been featured in GenomeWeb, Popular Science, the Huffington Post, and WIRED.