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Steven W. Wilhelm, Ph.D.
(Western Ontario)
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). |
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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. Gary is also the in
house expert on all things Boston Red Sox and
manages the oUTsiders softball team.
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Robbie Martin, Ph.D.
(Tennessee)
Postdoctoral Associate
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. |
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Emily Chase, Ph.D.
(Aix-Marseille
University)
Postdoctoral Associate
Emily joined the lab in
early 2022 after completing her doctoral work in France as well as a MSc
and BSc at Acadia (Canada). She has joined the group to work on
our AaV genetics team, seeking to develop tools to make the genome of
this virus tractable.
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Naomi Gilbert, B.Sc.
(James Madison)
Doctoral Candidate,
Microbiology
Naomi came to the lab in the
fall of 2017 from James Madison University (and
former AMERG member Morgan Steffen's lab). Naomi's dissertation
research will see her collecting samples in the southern ocean as part
of a research collaboration with scientists at CSIRO (Hobart) and
Bigelow. Her focus will be to resolve virus-host interactions from
transcriptional data sets as well as to characterize the interplay
between bacteria and phytoplankton with respect to trace metal cycling
in marine surface waters.
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Brittany Zepernick, B.Sc.
(Bowling Green)
Doctoral Candidate,
Microbiology
Brittany joined the lab in
fall 2018 as part of our harmful algal blooms team. She will be
working on our collaborations with researchers in Ohio, Michigan and NC
to examine factors that drive Microcystis success and ecological
outcomes in large lakes. Along with being a NSF-GRFP winner, she
holds a Tennessee Fellowship for Graduate Excellence. Most
recently she has jumped into the world of freshwater diatoms to try and
understand why they cannot compete with Microcystis. |
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Liz Denison, M.Sc.
(UNC Wilmington)
Doctoral Candidate,
Microbiology
Liz joined the lab in fall
2019 after completing a MSc project looking at cetacean microbiomes.
Currently she is working with our collaborators at ORNL and Duke on a
project to examine virus activity in Sphagnum bogs that are part
of the DOE Project Spruce
initiative. Along with examining the effects of temperature
on virus infection, Liz is becoming our in-house expert on all-things
mitovirus. Currently she holds a UT GATE Fellowship for her work.
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Gwendolyn Stark, B.Sc.
(SUNY ESF)
Doctoral Candidate,
Microbiology
Gwen came to the lab in fall
2019 with an interest in toxic cyanobacteria and fresh waters.
Presently she is working with Robbie Martin on the cold temperature
phenotype in Microcystis as well as resolving strain variability
that we see between different Microcystis isolates.
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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.
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Katelyn Hougton, 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".
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David Niknejad, B. Sc.
Masters Candidate,
Microbiology
David was a UTK Microbiology
major who worked with Brittany on her efforts to examine
competition between Microcystis and diatoms. He has
also participated - along with Robbie Martin - in our
collaborations with the Hans Paerl lab to examine the effects of
nutrient reduction on microbial communities and Microcystis in
Lake Erie.
Now he has moved onto a
graduate project where he is collaborating with a local citizens group
to establish a baseline understanding of the plankton of the Tennessee
River. |
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Brooke Creasey (Tennessee)
Undergraduate Assistant,
Microbiology
Brooke is a UT undergraduate
and has joined our giant
virus group, working with Alex and Emily on the genetics of Aureococcus anophagefferens Virus. |
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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.
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Graduate student alumni
Helena Pound |
Microbial Community
Dynamics of a Microcystis Bloom (Ph.D. 2021) |
Eric Gann |
Physiological and
ecological characterization of the Aureococcus anophagefferens
virus host system (Ph.D. 2020) |
Samantha Coy |
Tool development for
model studies on the interactions between a eukaryotic algae and a
giant virus (Ph.D. 2019) |
Robbie M. Martin |
Ecological
constraints of toxic cyanobacterial blooms
(Ph.D. 2018) |
Lauren E. Krausfeldt |
Molecular
characterization of factors constraining the success and toxicity of
Microcystis blooms (Ph.D. 2018) |
P. Jackson Gainer |
Microbial interactions
in the North Pacific Ocean (Ph. D. 2018) |
Joshua M. A. Stough |
Prediction of host-microbe interactions from community
high-throughput sequencing data (Ph.D. 2017) |
Mohammad Moniruzzaman |
Molecular and ecological aspects of interactions between
Aureococcus anophagefferens and its giant virus (Ph.D. 2016) |
Morgan Steffen |
Systems biology of Microcystis blooms (Ph.D. 2014) |
Shafer Belisle |
Urea as a nutrient source for Lake Erie blooms (M.Sc. 2014) |
Tiana Pimentel |
Environmental constraints on cyanomyophage in the Pacific Ocean (M.Sc.
2013) |
Claire Campbell |
The effects of nutrient limitation and cyanophage on heterotrophic
microbial diversity (M.Sc. 2012) |
Audrey Matteson |
Quantification and ecological perspectives on cyanophage and aquatic
viruses (Ph.D. 2011) |
Matthew Saxton
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Constraints on primary production in Lake Erie (Ph.D. 2011) |
Star Loar |
Seasonal Variation in Lake Erie picoplankton (M.Sc. 2009) |
Janet Rowe |
Ecological aspects of viruses in marine systems (Ph.D. 2008) |
Johanna Rinta-Kanto |
Biogeography and genetic diversity of toxin producing cyanobacteria
in a Laurentian Great Lake (PhD. 2006) |
Leo Poorvin |
The role of viruses in Fe cycling in the World's oceans (Ph.D. 2005) |
Julie L. Higgins |
Virus dynamics in high nutrient - low chlorophyll marine surface
waters (M.Sc. 2005) |
Cecile E. Mioni |
Using a bioluminescent bacterial bioreporter to assess iron
bioavailability in the ocean (Ph.D. 2004) |
Melanie Eldridge |
The effects of Fe on plankton in HNLC regions of the world's oceans
(Ph.D. 2004) |
Amanda L. Dean |
The dynamics, distribution, and activity of viruses in Lake Erie
(M.Sc. 2004) |
Shannon Pedigo-Eftland |
The effects of iron on growth and physiology of the cyanobacterium
Microcystis aeruginosa (M.Sc. 2004) |
Johanna Rinta-Kanto |
The effects of viral size class enrichments on microbial communities
in marine systems (M.Sc. 2001) |
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