Lab Alumni

Teo worked on comparative genomics and species diversification in diatoms.

Kala completed her PhD on salinity stress in diatoms in 2022. She works in the private sector.

Cory completed his PhD in 2023, working on diatom–bacterial associations. Cory woks as a bioinformatician in the private sector.

Kathryn completed an MS degree in 2022, studying the short-term response to hypo-osmotic stress in diatoms. She is a scientiest at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Colton used transcriptome data to help tease apart the origin of diatom life history traits. He completed his MS in May 2014 and moved to St. Louis to work as a bioinformatician in industry.

Anastasiia was a Fulbright Scholar from Ukraine who completed a Master's degree through a Fulbright Scholarship. She worked on the evolution of non-photosynthetic diatoms. She began a PhD program in Plant and Microbial Biosynthesis at Washington University in 2019.

Annie estimated the frequency of sexual reproduction in Stephanodiscus niagarae in Lake Fayetteville by tracking changes in cell-size over time. Annie graduated with honors in May 2016 and took a gap year before heading off to medical school.

Wilson graduated with Honors in May 2017 and moved to Carbondale, Illinois, to work on a Master's degree in EEB. Wilson's project on mitochondrial genome evolution in diatoms was published in Genome Biology and Evolution.

Jeric was the lead technician on a project to increase the number and diversity of diatoms that can be genetically transformed. He finished in January 2017 and now works as a microbiologist in industry.

Jake graduated with Honors in May 2017 and moved to New York City to get a Master's degree in biotechnology at NYU.

Kiley worked on on the invasive diatom, Discostella asterocostata. She graduated in May 2015, went to medical school at UAMS, and is now a practicing physician.

For her Honors research, Yufei carried out a large-scale experiment on salinity tolerance across a broad diversity of diatoms. She graduated with honors in December 2016 and went to culinary school.

Samantha graduated Summa Cum Laude in May 2016 and went on to medical school at the University of Missouri. Samantha's project describing the plastid genome of the diatom, Toxarium undulatum, was published in Current Genetics.

Jonathan worked primarily with Joseph Herzog's lab the in Physics Department. His research used mathematical modeling to explore the photoic properties of diatom frustules. He published an article based on his thesis work. He graduated in May 2015 and moved to Bethesda.

Kameila documented the diatom flora of her native Grenada. She was the first, but hopefully not last, student from beautiful Grenada! Kameila graduated in May 2016.

Katy studied different ways to cryopreserve diatom cultures. She graduated in May 2019 and started medical school at UAMS in Fall 2019.

Natalie worked on questions related to marine–freshwater transitions in diatoms.

Rachel studied long-term associations between bacteria and diatoms. She graduated in May 2018 and entered Stanford University's PhD program in Genetics in August 2018.

Katjana graduated with honors in May 2020 and moved to New York, NY, to start an MPH program in Epidemiology at Columbia University.