Lab Alumni 2006 - 2018

 

Katelyn Burgess (Burge).  Class of 2009.  Burge has moved from Manhattan where she worked in a nephrology research lab at Columbia University.  She is now in Emory University Medical School.  Now a pediatrics resident at Northwestern University Medical Center













  Kristin Davis, class of 2009,is working in Sequoia Nat’l Park and will be applying to PhD programs soon













Sophia Gayek graduated in 2009 and entered the interdisciplinary graduate program at Vanderbilt University!  Vandy is going to have to start paying me again if I keep sending them our  best students!













  John Miller, class of 2009, is accepted into the MD program at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical school, but his immediate plans center around season tix to the Phillies!














   Jennifer DeCuir (2006 or 2007) has finished year two of the combined MD/Ph.D. program (MSTP) at Columbia University in the summer of 2007.   We don't know what lab she'll end up in, but check back and we'll let you know (we do know that it will be epidemiology related!)














   Christopher Ford (B.S. 2007, MA 2007.) is in the Ph.D. program in Biological Sciences and Public Health at Harvard University.  Chris is working on Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the lab of Dr. Sarah Fortune for his dissertaion work.  His work in our lab was recently published.  To see the abstract, click here.  He and Dan Weinberger will be at all the Red Sox home games














   Kenny W. DeFontes III completed the MD program at Johns Hopkins University.  I'm certain Kenny will end up as an infectious disease physician or a gastroenterologist; after all those years working on Helicobacter pylori, what else would he do!














  Jessica Nelson (aka Saba Nelson to a few close friends!!) did the NIH post-bac program for one year.   Saba is enrolled in a  Ph.D. program in Neurobiology at Yale University.  She is in Daniel Colon-Ramos’ lab.  Her work examines the mechanisms of axon arborization in C. elegans.  Her work while here at W&M landed her on a paper published in August 2008, check it out here.














  Hillay Schwab worked for an endodontist in Richmond and began VCU dental school in fall 2008!














  Courtney St. Clair is in the Ph.D. program in the Microbiology Department at Emory University working on he Measles Virus.  She's hoping to break into the CDC while she's in Atlanta!













  Cat Paules is pursuing her MD at the University of Nebraska.  We always knew Cat was a Corn Husker at heart!!  Cat's work was recently published; click here for the abstract.













  James Swetnam is working in a structural biology lab at NYU medical for a couple of years before applying to graduate school!













  Alex Sledd is in the combined MD/MPH program at Tulane University in New Orleans.  If you see her wearing beads around Mardi Gras, be sure to ask how she got them!  See you on Bourbon Street Alex!!














   Robert Simmons (2007) has left the country!  He is back  in St. Petersburg Russia studying and working for a year before applting to graduate schools in the area of evolutionary biology.  You can always remember Rob's birthday because it is the same as mine (and the same as George W. Bush - man!, don't we hate to admit that we share anything in common with him!!)














Cara Wilder graduated in May 2006 and finished a Ph.D. program in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Oregon State University in 2011(?).  She is a post doc at the American Type Culture Collection













Amina Egal-Roble is another 2006 graduate from our lab.  Amina was awarded a Fullbright Fellowship for 2006-2007.  She will be working in Senegal and studying the interactions between AIDS and nutrition.  Amina will begin graduate school at Oxford University in the fall of 2007.















Jonathan Snider finished in 2006 as well.  He finished medical school  at the University of Michigan.  He liked it there so much, that he stayed on for his residency in neurology (oh, the straight lines there!!)














Jeff Burket has now finished medical school at University of Virginia and a 2nd Lt. in the US Army.   He and Lauren are now married and have two children!!















Robert Pitts is another 2006 class member.  Robert spent the summer of 2006 in Buenas Aires Argentina studying Chagas Disease.  Shortly after that he did his Fullbright Fellowship to Zimbabwe doing research on Group B Streptococcal disease in neonates.  He then working at NIH for a year.  Robert entered UC San Francisco med school in 2008.













George Liechti finally competed his MS degree!  He was two years late, but on July 30, 2007, he successfully defended his thesis.  Next, finishing the manuscript for publication!   He has already begun his Ph.D. program in the Microbiology department at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  He is still working on Helicobacter pylori!!  He is in Joanna Goldberg's lab there.

Lauren O’Hagan
After presenting her work at the 2010 ASM meeting in San DIego, Lauren began her first year as a dental student at UConn! All that time in the ceramics lab here at W&M will really pay off!
Dan Hallinger
Dan was a Master’s Student Class of 2010. He now works for a shadowy government organization as a “biologist.” He is sorely missed. To all of us he was a noble scholar and a fine sportsman.

Stephen is in Veterinary school at UPenn.  He is considering the combined VMD/Ph.D program.  Seriously, our lab is just not the same without Stephen (it’s quieter and cleaner but not necessarily more fun!)

Stephen Cole
Hilary Whelan
Hilary graduated in 2012 and is going to medical school at Penn State!

Vanessa finished her masters degree in the summer of 2011 and is now in a Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins University

Vanessa Quinlivan-Repasi

Bert graduated in 2011 and is in the MD/Ph.D program at University of Virginia

Bert Cortina

Sam Harvey completed his BS and honors thesis in May 2012.  He will stay in our lab this summer as a Beckman Scholar then he enters the combined MD/Ph.D program at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Jackie Corely graduated in 2011.  She and Justin were married that summer and moved to Chicago where Jackie is in Rush Medical school.  Update.  Jackie is now a neurosurery resident at Duke University

Will Kaplan graduated in 2012 and is entering a Ph.D. program in medicinal chemistry at University of Michigan.

                                               Girolama Bui

Girolama Bui graduated in 2013 and will be pursuing a public health career and is now working with Ashoka. 

                                                            Vivian Cooper

Vivian graduated in 2013 and has moved to Chicago and will be attending Rosalind Franklin Medical School there.  She and Sam Harvey (class of 2012) were married on July 25, 2014.  She and Catherine Acio are co-first authors on a paper in J. Bact in 2014!

Katherine Dove graduated in 2013 and will be attending medical school at Eastern Virginia Medical school in Norfolk (hopefully soon to be re-named “The College of William & Mary Medical School”

                                                               Amelia Tyler

Amelia graduated in 2013 and is now in veterinary school at VIrginia Tech; her lifelong dream!!

                                                            Sam Sessou

Sam graduated in 2013 and will attend medical school at MCV/VCU in Richmond (and plans on coming by our house to do laundry on weekends)   

                                                            Dan Sylvester

Dan is a member of class of 2013 and in 2015 began medical school at Boston University.

                                             Mily Nguyen

Mily graduated in summer 2013 and is now in a Masters of International Health program at TUlane University.  THe program requires she join the Peace Corps to complete the program.  That’s why she chose the Tulane program!! 

                                                                    Amy Bredehoft

Amy graduated in summer 2013 and is taking a gap year prior to applying to graduate programs, no doubt in microbiology!!

                                               Monique (Mo) Bennett

Mo, the “Queen of Signal Transduction” in the lab, successfully defended her masters thesis July 16 2014 on her two year project on the poly C tract in the arsS gene of H. pylori as well looking and genetic diversity of H. pylori isolates from different regions of the same patient stomach.  Her next stop; the Ph.D program in Pathology, Microbiobiology and Immunology Dept. at Vanderbilt University!

                                               Alexis Bennett

Alexis graduated in May 2014.   She icompleted a graduate school at Boston University and is now in Drexel Medical School.

Eva Humes and K-Ay Lee both graduated in May 2014.  Eva is working for a bit before going on to medical school.  K-Ay is job humting in the DC area

Dialra Kiran graduated in May 2014 and is currently in a combined DVM/Ph.D program at Colorado State University.
Kendra Jackson graduated in May 2014 after 4 full years in our lab! She completed med school medical school at University of Virginia! She is currently a resident in Charlotte NC (and we miss her!!)

                                                               Larry Zhu.

Larry graduated in 2014 also and is currently exploring the job market and a career in stand up comedy!

                                               Abby Acio

Abby has finished graduate work in forensic science at Penn State!  We still miss her and know she will help solve many crimes!  She is currently working in microbiology in Syracuse

                                               Anthony Bennici

Anthony is currently in an NIH IRTA post bac program for two years before going to medical school!  We and his project miss him sorely!!

Yusheng graduated in 2015. He is now a tech at Boston Children’ Hospital in the Immunology Department and is still working on his manuscript

                                               Kim Bond

Kim graduated in 2015 and is taking a year to work before appling to medical school.

Veronica Gray graduated and is currently doing an NIH fellowship for a couple of years before going on to medical school. We really miss her in the lab, but man, do we miss her in the bacteriophage lab!! AS of Fall 2017, she is a student in EVMS!!

                                               Catherine Acio

Catherine joined as a freshman and graduated in 2016.  Her work in lab, including her Honors THesis, resulted in two publications!  We miss her and big sister Abby badly, but our loss is the MD/Ph.D (MSTP) program at U. Rochester’s gain!

                                               Olivia Awate

Olivia graduated in 2016.  She is currently in a Neisseria research lab at Virginia Commonwealth University working on her Ph.D. in Microbiology in the lab of Dr. Cynthia Cornelissen on Neisseria

                                                          Allison Begley

Allison was our high school senior who graduated The Governor’s High School for Science and Technology in 2016.  As a high school senior, after school, she did some remarkable genetics on HP including expressing an epitope tag in HP and altering the phase status of a gene.  She is currently in the School of Nursing at Rutgers University

                                               Rachel Durrwacter

Rachel graduated from our lab in 2016 and is living her dream as a veterinary student at UPenn.  A DVM wasn’t good enough, she had to go for the VMD!!

Jack graduated in 2016 after three years of HP research in our lab. He went “across the pond” to a graduate program at The London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygeine to pursue his dream of graduate work in microbiology and epidemiology. (Yeah, he hates that I use this picture of him, but it is my favorite!!). He is now in the IRTA program at NIH.
Jack Villani

Shiva Armbardar is a 2017 graduate of our lab!  He will begin medical school at Eastern Virginia School of Medicine this fall!

Danielle Horridge is a 2017 graduate of our lab and began as a freshman working on HP in our lab.  She also recieved a prestigious fellowship from The American Society for Microbiology to support her research. She completed a senior honors thesis and presented her research at Microbe 2017 in New Orleans.  In the fall she will begin medical school at Wake Forest University

Maran Ilanchezhian;  Graduated in 2018.  Now in a two year post bac research position at NIH investigating childhood cancers before applying to medical schools

Arial Eclipse graduated in 2018.  She is currently working as a paramedic and planning to apply to Physicians Assistant Graduate programs for 2019!

Anna Kenan graduated in 2018 and is working in a research lab in Durham NC for the year before applying to MD/PhD programs for 2019

Kexin Fan graduated in December 2017.  She is currently in the Microbiology and Immunology Graduate program at Imperial College in London UK

Jessica Higgins graduated in 2018 and is working for a year and applying to medical schools

Jiajia Chen graduated in 2018 and is now in a graduate program in bioinformatics at Boston University