Steven W. Wilhelm, Ph.D. (Western Ontario)

Mossman Professor of Microbiology and benevolent dictator

Professor Wilhelm is the laboratory PI and responsible for herding cats, chaos control, wine selection and middle relief.

Steven Wilhelm is the Kenneth and Blaire Mossman Professor of the Department of Microbiology.  Professor Wilhelm is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology as well as a Sustaining Fellow of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO). In June of 2021 he was named the winner (along with Curtis Suttle) of the John H Martin Award from ASLO for their initial description of  the viral shunt. In 2022 he was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

In 2024 Professor Wilhelm became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Gary LeCleir, Ph.D. (Georgia)  

Research Assistant Professor, REU Director

Dr LeCleir came to Knoxville in 2006 after completing his PhD at the University of Georgia.  He is our in house statistical guru, field deployment leader and reigning karaoke champion. 

Along with teaching in the Departmental core curriculum, Dr LeCleir also serves as  the director of the NSF-FUNDED REU site run by the department.

Robbie Martin, Ph.D. (Tennessee)

Research Assistant Professor

Robbie joined the lab in late 2012 as a PhD student and has been a virtual Jack-of-all-trades.  After completing his PhD he accepted our offer to stay on to continue to work on our toxic cyanobacterial projects.  Presently Robbie is setting running chemostat studies of Microcystis gene regulation and physiology that will feed into modeling studies by collaborators at  the Technical University of Berlin.

Alex Truchon,  M.Sc. (U Mass Amherst)       

Doctoral Candidate, Microbiology

Alex joined the lab in the fall of 2020 where he is working as part of the Aureococcus team.  Along with working on resequencing the virus and some hosts, he will be continuing our efforts to make the AaV virus-host system genetically tractable. Alex was awarded a Tennessee Fellowship for Graduate Excellence when he joined UT.

Katelyn Houghton,  M.Sc. (U West Florida)       

Doctoral Candidate, Microbiology

Katelyn joined the lab in late 2021 to work with us on our projects examining virus - host interactions.  She will be using single-celled approaches to transcriptomics and samples from the Sargasso Sea to tease apart "who infects who".

Ashton Stark, B. Sc.   (James Madison) 

Doctoral Candidate, Microbiology

Ashton is a JMU alum and former NSF REU student from the UTK program in Microbiology.

Presently Ashton is focusing on the development of single-cell transcriptional approaches for picoeukaryotes and virus infection in marine systems.

Jason Olavesen, M. Sc. (U. Massahusetts - Boston)  

Doctoral Candidate, Microbiology

Jason joined us after completing a MSc in Earth & Ocean Sciences at U. Mass-Boston.  There he studied dissolved organic carbon in the Hudson River Estuary.  At UTK he has taken on the challenge of working with Raphidiopsis and the development of better quantitative tools for its study in natural systems.

Jennifer Baily, B. Sc.   (VMI) 

Doctoral Candidate, Microbiology

Jennifer joined us in 2024 in order to finish up her doctoral work.  A member of the Karen Lloyd research group, Jennifer's research focuses on using molecular tools and microbial community structure.  Our goal is to give Jennifer a sense of community to hang out with (and maybe to gain some insight from her) as she completes her dissertation.

Laura Smith, M.Sc. (Delaware)

Research Associate

With a BSc from The Ohio State University and a MSc from Delaware, Laura has joined the lab in early 2021 to help our team working on all thing Microcystis. Along with maintaining culture stocks she will be helping to get our various chemostats up and running (and keep them that way) for experiments ranging from long term evolution influences to the effects of episodic events.

Isabella Maggard, B.Sc. (Virginia - Wise)

Doctoral Candidate, Microbiology

Skyler joined the lab in 2025 and has been working with Jason on all things Raphidiopsis, nitrogen and photosynthesis.

Estibaliz Garcia-Egocheaga, B.Sc.

(Florida Southern)

Doctoral Candidate, Microbiology

Esti and Professor Wilhelm met in the hallway of a conference in 2022, and after a brief chat on opportunities, here we are.  Presently Esti is working on assembling a series of metagenomes from diel studies in the Sargasso Sea.  As part of her work she will help with the development of single-cell transcriptomic approaches to characterize cyanobacterial infections.

Sarah Lott, M. Sc. (Wagner College)

Doctoral Candidate, Microbiology

Sarah came to the lab as a rotator in 2024 after completing a M.Sc. at Wagner with UTK alumnus Katherine Moccia.  She  has stayed on as part of a collaboration with the Zinser lab to look at the role of viruses in driving the productivity of picoplankton and subsurface oxygen maxima in the Sargasso Sea.  As part of her work, she will help with the development of single-cell transcriptomic approaches to characterize virus-host interactions.

Skyler Eckl

Undergraduate assistant

Skyler joined the lab in 2024 and has been working with Jason on all things Raphidiopsis, nitrogen and photosynthesis.

Gracie Wren

Undergraduate assistant

Gracie joined our group in August of 2024 and has been working with Dr Martin on Microcystis dynamics in controlled chemostat systems.