Alumni Highlights

Ana M. Vazquez Catoni participated in the Plant Genomics @MSU REU program during summer 2017 where she performed research with Dr. Gregory Bonito in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences studying the diversity and effects of Mortierella fungi on plants. After participating in the Plant Genomics program, Ana was awarded a BIOREU travel grant to present her REU research at the Annual Biomediacl Research Conference for Minority Students meeting in 2017. During this time, she continued research in the Tropical Microbial Ecology Laboratory supervised by Dr. Arturo Massol Deya at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez (UPRM), quantifying the bacterial composition of the phyllosphere of coffee leaves. She graduated from UPRM with a B.S. in Biology and a B.S. in Industrial Microbiology. In July 2018, Ana presented at the 11th International Mycological Congress in San Juan, Puerto Rico where she won the best undergraduate poster award. In Fall 2018, Ana began a Masters in the Department of Plant Pathology at the Ohio State University (OSU) under the guidance of Dr. Soledad Benitez. She currently studies bacterial endophyte transmission in tomato plants grown in soils previously grazed by chickens, as part of crop-livestock rotation management. She was awarded the Graduate Enrichment Fellowship at OSU. In March 2019, she co-founded the website Women in Ag Science womeninagscience.org, a platform aimed towards raising visibility, empowering and supporting women in agricultural science fields.

Nayeli Sanchez participated in the Plant Genomics @ MSU REU Program during summer 2015 where she performed research with Maren Friesen in the Department of Plant Biology studying root associated bacteria in Trifolium. At the time, Nayeli was a rising junior at Monroe County Community College and participation in the program was her first exposure to research. Nayeli transferred to Eastern Michigan University (EMU) in Fall 2015 where she continued research in the Ronald E. McNair Scholars program with Dr. Ulrich Reinhardt studying swimming behavior of the invasive Sea Lamprey in the Great Lakes. She presented her research on Sea Lampreys at the McNair Scholars National Conference. In 2017, Nayeli was accepted into the University of Toledo’s Land-Lake Ecology REU Program where she performed research into the health effects of algal bloom toxins in vulnerable populations. Nayeli’s passion for research has continued to grow since her first experience at MSU and in fall 2018 she began a Masters in Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State University.

Zach WareJoncas graduated with a BA in biology from St. Olaf College in 2017. He participated in the Plant Genomics @ MSU REU program during the summer of 2015 where he performed research with Beronda Montgomery into the function of the TSPO protein of the cyanobacterium Fremyella diplosiphon. His summer research was published in the journal Biochemistry in 2017. During the summer of 2016, Zach participated in a second research internship at the Mayo Clinic and worked with the biotech start-up company Lifengine Technologies. In the summer of 2017 he began a full time research position in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Program at Mayo Clinic. Zach also works part time as the lab manager of Lifengine Technologies.

Beth Alger was an REU participant in 2015. She studied interactions between the type III effector proteins of the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae and Arabidopsis in the Day lab. She graduated with a degree in Molecular Biology from California State University, Monterey Bay and returned to MSU in 2016 as a graduate student in the Plant Breeding, Genetics and Biotechnology Program and is performing research with Patrick Edger on polyploid evolution and subgenome dominance in octoploid strawberry. She was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to support her graduate research and served as a research mentor in the 2017 REU program.

Abigail Miller majored in Biochemistry at MSU. She was an REU participant in 2014 and performed a research project under the guidance of Rob Last and Pengxiang Fan in which she studied the biochemical properties and evolution of enzymes required for acylsugar biosynthesis in the glandular trichomes of tomato and closely related wild relatives. In 2015, Abigail was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the American Society of Plant Biologists to continue her research, which was published in PNAS in 2016. Abigail is currently a graduate student at Cornell University in the Bretscher lab.

Mollie Enright was an REU participant in 2014 where she performed research under the guidance of Dr. Dan Jones. Mollie used preparative high performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry followed by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to purify and structurally characterize trichome derived acylsugars from petunia. Acylsugars are plant specialized metabolites that are important for defense against insect pests. Her REU research was published in 2017 in Metabolomics. Mollie graduated in 2015 with a degree in chemistry from Gordon College and worked as a program manager at Beyond Benign until 2018 when she began graduate school in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toledo.

Sam Lotz participated in the Plant Genomics program during summer 2013 and performed research with Dr. David Kramer to investigate the photosynthetic properties of Arabidopsis knockout mutants in genes of unknown function using advanced spectroscopic techniques. Sam graduated in 2014 with a degree in bioinformatics from Slippery Rock University. He liked his experience at MSU so much that he decided to join the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology as a graduate student in the Dickson lab.

David Hufnagel graduated from MSU with a degree in Molecular Genetics and Genomics. During his REU experience, David worked in the Barry lab on a project to examine terpene diversity in the trichomes of wild relatives of tomato. His research culminated in a publication in the Plant Journal. Following completion of his REU experience, David joined the Shiu lab at MSU where he developed skills in bioinformatics and contributed to several papers related to genome annotation and gene and genome evolution. Following graduation, David joined the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology at Iowa State University where he is a graduate student working with Dr. Matthew Hufford on the hybridization and evolution of teosinte, an ancestor of modern maize varieties.