People

Roles: Faculty Investigator, Potential MFF (REU) Host, Potential Undergraduate Mentor

Research Areas: Agriculture Research, Animal Hosts, Bacteria, Disease Ecology and Evolution, Genetics, Genomics and Cell Biology of Infection, Microbiota and Microbiomes

The Schmidt lab focuses on microbial community diversity, metabolic activity, and genome evolution in aquatic environments. Students will gain experience with microbial ecology and computational tools. As an example project, students can characterize the microbial communities in marine sediments associated with oyster beds to understand the impact of oyster farming. Climate change dramatically impacts freshwater ecosystems, which are becoming warmer, more acidic, and nutrient rich. The collective influence of the microbial inhabitants of these ecosystems, despite their tiny size, can have an immense impact on water quality. However, we lack fundamental knowledge on the ecology and evolution of these aquatic microbial systems. Research in the lab focuses on how aquatic environments and microhabitats influence microbial community diversity, composition, metabolic activity, and genome evolution. To address these topics, our lab uses a combination of field work, molecular methods, and computational tools.  

Roles: Faculty Investigator

Research Areas: Animal Hosts, Bacteria, Disease Ecology and Evolution, Genetics, Genomics and Cell Biology of Infection, Microbiota and Microbiomes, Plant Hosts

Our research is directed at characterizing structures and biological function of biogenic small molecules (BSMs) that regulate development and immune responses in plants and animals and serve important functions with associated microbiota. Using comparative metabolomic approaches we have engaged in a comprehensive effort to characterize structures and functions of all BSMs (more than 20,000 small molecules) produced by the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, with a specific cofus on signaling molecules that regulate organismal development and interactions with microbiota.

Roles: Faculty Investigator

Research Areas: Animal Hosts, Bacteria, Disease Ecology and Evolution, Fungi, Veterinary/Clinical Research, Viruses

My research group focuses on free-ranging North America wildlife to improve health outcomes across a variety of species, their pathogens and parasites.  At the Cornell Wildlife Health Lab, we derive solutions from novel mathematical applications, innovative diagnostic evaluations, field-based studies, and human dimensions of wildlife diseases.

Roles: Faculty Investigator

Research Areas: Agriculture Research, Bacteria, Disease Ecology and Evolution, Fungi, Genetics, Genomics and Cell Biology of Infection, Microbiota and Microbiomes, Plant Hosts

Two main areas of study in the Smart lab include identifying genes in bacterial pathogens that enable movement within a plant, and understanding the population diversity of rapidly reproducing oomycete pathogens. These studies enhance our knowledge of pathogen virulence determinants and further elucidate how plants recognize and respond to pathogens.

Roles: Faculty Investigator, Potential Postdoc Mentor, Potential Undergraduate Mentor

Research Areas: Animal Hosts, Bacteria, Disease Ecology and Evolution, Genetics, Genomics and Cell Biology of Infection, Veterinary/Clinical Research, Viruses

The unifying themes of my ongoing research program are seeking to understand the underlying mechanisms that control the pathogenesis and disease associated with bacterial infections, as well as developing control strategies for the bacteria or its associated disease. The main focus for the past years as an independent scientist was on the Salmonella A2B5 toxins: biology, pathogenesis, and neutralization. Built on this successful and productive experience in the field of host-pathogen interactions, my research program is expanding based on the current public health demand with an emphasis on advancing our understanding that would help tackle public health threats associated with drug-resistance and drug-tolerance of bacteria. My group has a track record of properly using approaches integrating bacterial genetics, biochemistry, glycobiology, cell biology, immunology, structural biology, and animal models to decipher the interactions between the host and bacterial pathogens. My research expertise is in glycoconjugates in the host-microbe interactions, bacterial AB toxins, bacterial adaptation to the host and host cells, bacterial virulence & persistence, antimicrobial resistance, vaccines & monoclonal antibodies.

Roles: Faculty Investigator, Potential Postdoc Mentor

Research Areas: Agriculture Research, Disease Ecology and Evolution, Fungi, Genetics, Genomics and Cell Biology of Infection, Microbiota and Microbiomes, Plant Hosts

The Turgeon lab works on mechanisms of fungal virulence to plants with particular emphasis on the roles of fungal secondary metabolites, iron and oxidative stress. Classical genetic, molecular genetic, and genomic approaches are used.

Roles: Faculty Investigator

Research Areas: Animal Hosts, Bacteria, Disease Ecology and Evolution, Genetics, Genomics and Cell Biology of Infection, Veterinary/Clinical Research

We study how M.tuberculosis is capable of surviving within humans for decades in the face of a fully competent immune response.  Our focus is primarily on the bacterial pathways, innate immunity, and the evolution of bacterial drug resistance in mammalian hosts.

Roles: CIHMID Postdoc

Research Areas: Animal Hosts, Genetics, Genomics and Cell Biology of Infection, Microbiota and Microbiomes

Janelle’s research project aims to understand how diet affects the microbiome, and how these diet-dependent microbiome changes affect the immune system- particularly CD8+ T cells. Her work also uses flow cytometry and sequencing to look at how diet and microbiome changes in early life affects CD8+ T cell development.

Roles: Faculty Investigator, Potential MFF (REU) Host, Potential Undergraduate Mentor

Research Areas: Animal Hosts, Bacteria, Disease Ecology and Evolution, Microbiota and Microbiomes

My lab studies how stress and social interactions alter the biological state of organisms and their gut microbes. Much of our work uses free-living passerine birds as systems to test the gut microbial impacts of stress and social connectedness. Student projects will involve field work and characterization of bird gut microbiomes using amplicon sequencing and computational skills.

Roles: Faculty Investigator

Research Areas:

With a dual focus on viral pathogenesis and stem cell biology, the objective of Dr. Gerlinde Van de Walle’s research is to open up new avenues towards therapeutic intervention by better understanding the pathogenesis of diseases important to veterinary and human medicine. To this end, her lab uses various model systems, including in vitro 2D cell cultures, ex vivo 3D explant and organoid models, and in vivo rodent and large animal models. Many veterinary species are naturally susceptible to pathogens closely related to those that infect humans.  Since these animal and human pathogens frequently share similar pathogenesis profiles, animal diseases might be considered translational models for their human counterparts. The viruses we currently study are equine hepatitis-associated viruses, (including equine hepacivirus and equine parvovirus-hepatitis), equine herpesviruses, and feline herpesvirus type 1.