The Department of Microbiology is pleased to announce that Dr. Vincent Starai has been selected as a recipient of the Sandy Beaver Excellence in Teaching Award for 2024.

These awards for excellence in teaching annually honor outstanding faculty in the Franklin College who have shown a sustained commitment to high-quality instruction. Congratulations to Dr. Starai!

List of previous recipients

Career Talk with Microbiology Seminar Speaker, Dr. Aisha Burton, on Friday April 19^th, at 10 am Biological Sciences Room 217. 

Distinguished Research Professor 2024

The title of Distinguished Research Professor recognizes senior faculty who are internationally recognized for their innovative body of work and its transformational impact on the field. The Professorship is awarded to faculty working at the very top of their discipline, who are recognized as a preeminent leader in their field of study. 

The Microbiology Undergraduate Program had several participants in this years CURO Symposium at the Classic Center.

Best Paper Award for Physical and Environmental Science

Abbey Wilson won the CURO Symposium Best Paper Award for Physical and Environmental Science with her paper titled “Developing Real-Time qPCR Methods for Antimicrobial Resistance Gene Quantification for Application in Wastewater Based Epidemiology.”

Career Talk with Microbiology Seminar Speaker, Dr. Aisha Burton, on Friday April 19^th, at 10 am Biological Sciences Room 217. 

Dr. Burton will share her career journey, graduate school experiences, and how she became a Provost New Faculty Fellow (2024 - 2026) and an incoming NIH Cornell Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology (2026). Following this talk, we’ll have a Q&A session to get to know our speaker better and get some great advice on grad school and beyond! 

Food and beverage will be catered for this event. Fill out this RSVP form for a headcount: https://forms.gle/oCxmWCvfuTWHi6RN8

Sponsored by the Microbiology Graduate Student Association.

The Microbiology Undergraduate Program was recently awarded the Regents' Teaching Excellence Award for Department or Program. This award is designed to showcase an outstanding department or program that promotes, supports, and recognizes excellence in teaching and innovative approaches to serving students.

Each faculty and staff member have contributed to the programs success over the last twenty years and therefore have all earned this award. Dr. Jennifer Walker, Undergraduate Program Coordinator, took the initiative to apply for this award.

The annual CURO Symposium highlights excellence in undergraduate research at the University of Georgia by offering an opportunity for students to communicate their research to the broader community.

All undergraduates pursuing faculty-mentored research may apply to present their research at the CURO Symposium. We welcome presentations in all disciplines, from undergraduates in their first years to their last years, who have a lot or just a little experience, whether their status is Honors or non-Honors, and whether or not they have been enrolled in CURO coursework.

We also encourage students to present projects at all stages of completion, from proposal, to in-progress, to finished product.

The 2024 CURO Symposium will be held April 8-9, 2024, at the Classic Center in Athens, Georgia.

Presentations are either a poster or a 10-minute oral presentation. The poster session for all poster presentations will be Monday, April 8, from 4-6 p.m. Oral presentations occur Monday, April 8, and Tuesday, April 9.

Microbiology Department Participants:

Posters

Victoria Clifton - Investigation of Mitochondrial Inhibitors for Improved Chemotherapy Against Toxoplasma Gondii

Kevin Richmond - Sequence Polymorphism and the Role of Multiple Copies of the var2csa Gene in Plasmodium falciparum

Connor Norris - Exploring Campylobacter phylogeny using publicly available genomes

Kiana Pillay - Effects of Environmental Parameters on Biodegradation of Malathion

Ayden Mamaghani - Studies into the Metabolic Origins of an Alternative Coenzyme B12 Intermediate, α-ribazole in Salmonella enterica

Maggie Abboud - Examining the role of Helicobacter pylori HP0420 on flagellar motor function

Kayla Dechkampu - Creating Hybrid Strains of Cryptococcus neoformans to Understand Mitochondrial DNA Uniparental Inheritance

Caroline Smith - Probing the role of YggS in PLP homeostasis in Salmonella enterica

Grant Quinn - The Effect of Dark Septate Fungi on Sweet Sorghum Biomass in a Drought Condition

Julian Bolanos - Immunodominance of non-protective Bordetella bronchiseptica antigens contributes to the ineffectiveness of Kennel Cough vaccines