Undergraduates Awarded Multiple Awards for ABASM!

Today, undergraduates Megan Lyons, Elizabeth Stahovich (Cascio Lab), Trista Newman, and Cate Chalovich all presented at the Allegheny Branch of the American Society for Microbiology Regional Conference in California, PA.

Elizabeth presented a poster on her summer research experience at at the University of Bern in Switzerland with a project that focused on neurolisteriosis, an infection of the central nervous system caused by the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes.

Megan presented a poster on her summer research experience at Penn State in Dr. Dudley’s on project that focused on Sequencing of the O-Antigen Region in E. coli using CRISPR Cleavage assays.

Cate presented, and was awarded with a Top Undergraduate Poster Presentation Award (and cash), a poster on her continued efforts to make knock out strains of Listeria to advance projects uncovering the interactions with host proteins.

Trista, whose abstract was selected for an oral presentation, was awarded with the Top Undergraduate Oral Presentation Award (and cash), for her efforts in identifying novel antibiotic scaffolds that target common foodborne-pathogens!

Congrats to everyone!

Dissertation Outline DEFENDED by Elias

As a part of the development of graduate students into scientist, each student is required to put together an initial draft of what they imagine their thesis might look like 3-4 years from now. Today, Elias successfully defended his plans for identifying potential scaffold to control the ever growing number of antibiotic-resistance pathogens as well as identifying the target and mechanism of an effector protein that Dr. Heisler has been interested in since 2017.

Morgan Successfully Defends her Dissertation Outline

As a part of the development of graduate students into scientist, each student is required to put together an initial draft of what they imagine their thesis might look like 3-4 years from now. Today, Morgan successfully demonstrated how she plans to tackle an ongoing problem in Listeria biology for explaining how our cells sometimes cannot protect themselves from a Listeria infection, and how the bacteria uses its virulence factors to successfully do this.

 

Congrats Morgan!

Trista presents that the Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium at Rice University!

As part of Trista’s Goldwater Scholarship, Trista had the opportunity to present the work she has been doing in the lab over the past 14 months in an oral presentation. Additionally, she was awarded full financial support to travel to, attend, and network at the conference with other Goldwater fellows and scientists from the greater southeast Texas area. 
Feedback from those at her presentation were “extremely positive, and your average ranking was “excellent”… for your overall impression (good logical flow with all the expected sections of the talk being present) and your introduction.” Her use of Ryan Gugliotti’s introduction slides also impressed many of the reviewers.