Faculty | One Health Microbiome Center | The Huck Institutes (en-US)

Uygar Abaci

Associate Professor of Philosophy

uxa14@psu.edu

Professor of Material Science and Engineering
Nanoscale materials and phenomena for biological, optical and structural applications, property manipulation via novel chemical pathways for designer particles and materials, colloid and interfacial chemistry, powder characterization, powder…

Lee Ahern

Associate Professor of Advertising and Public Relations

Istvan Albert

Research Professor of Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics, large scale biological data analysis, microarrays and sequence analysis. Scientific programming, algorithm development. Database-driven web development.

Leann Andrews

Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture

One Health and the built environment, landscape systems, urban ecological design, design activism, community design, transdisciplinary action research and training programs

landrews@psu.edu

Corien Bakermans

Professor of Microbiology (Altoona)

Mary Barbercheck

Professor of Entomology

Paul Bartell

Associate Professor of Avian Biology

The regulation of biological clocks in birds at the systems level.

Iliana Baums

Professor of Biology

Molecular ecology and evolution of reef invertebrates.

Guilherme Becker

Associate Professor of Biology
Host-microbial interactions, landscape genetics and the ecology of global change stressors. Building models and conducting field and laboratory experiments to understand the biotic and abiotic mechanisms driving wildlife disease dynamics in both…

David Beyer

Professor of Mushrooms

Jordan Bisanz

Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

The interface of microbiology and bioinformatics, with approaches including genomics and metabolomics to investigate the interplay of diet, drugs, and the gut microbiome.

jpb6325@psu.edu

Ottar Bjornstad

Huck Chair of Epidemiology; Distinguished Professor of Entomology and Biology; Adjunct Professor in Statistics

Population ecology and population dynamics with particular emphasis on mathematical and computational aspects

Seth Bordenstein

Director of the Microbiome Center; Huck Chair in Microbiome Sciences; Professor of Biology and Entomology

The evolutionary and genetic principles that shape symbiotic interactions between animals, microbes, and viruses and the major applications of these interactions to human health.

srb6251@psu.edu

Sarah Bordenstein

Associate Research Professor

Brady Bowman

Associate Professor of Philosophy

Elizabeth Boyer

Professor of Water Resources

Hydrology, Biogeochemistry, Water Quality, and Atmospheric Deposition.

Mary Ann Bruns

Professor of Soil Microbiology and Biogeochemistry; Faculty-in-Charge of Microbiome Sciences Dual-Title Degree Program

Compositions and functions of microbiomes in agriculture, ecological restoration, and engineered systems for ecosystem service provision and climate change adaptation

Carolee Bull

Professor of Plant Pathology; Bacterial Systematics Head; Director of Microbiome Sciences Dual-Title Degree Program

Bacterial systematics, epidemiology, and population biology of bacterial plant pathogens and biological control agents to develop alternatives to synthetic chemicals for plant disease management

Liana Burghardt

Director of the Center for Root and Rhizosphere Biology; Huck Early Career Chair of Root Biology and Rhizosphere Interactions; Assistant Professor of Plant Science
Plant-microbe-climate interactions; the evolution and ecology of legumes and nitrogen-fixing rhizobia; the genomic basis and environment dependence of root, nodule, and mutualism traits; GWAS/transcriptomics/evolve & resequence…

Maurice Byukusenge

Assistant Clinical Professor

mpb5554@psu.edu

Michael Campbell

Professor of Biology

John Carlson

Professor of Molecular Genetics; Director, Schatz Center for Tree Molecular Genetics

Genome mapping, including genetic linkage mapping, molecular cytogenetics; studies of genetic diversity in forests.

Darrell Cockburn

Assistant Professor of Food Science

Estelle Couradeau

Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Science & Management

Sarah Craig

Associate Research Professor

Sharifa Crandall

Assistant Professor of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology
Drawing from community ecology theory to understand how fungal and oomycete pathogens shape plant disease dynamics, with a focus on root and soil microbiome diversity, structure, and function; how ecological disturbances drive the complex…

Emily Davenport

Assistant Professor of Biology

Understanding the complex relationship humans have with our microbiomes, using high-throughput sequencing technologies and novel computational and statistical techniques.

exd44@psu.edu

Donald Davis

Professor of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology

Justin DiAngelo

Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Francisco Diaz

Director of the Center for Reproductive Health and Biology; Associate Professor of Reproductive Biology

Ovarian physiology. Role of SMAD-mediated signaling in follicular and female germ cell (oocyte) development.

Francisco Dini-Andreote

Assistant Professor of Plant Science

Microbiome, plant-microbe interactions, and community ecology. Harnessing the plant microbiome to enhance protection against biotic and abiotic stresses.

fjd5141@psu.edu

Danielle Downs

Professor of Kinesiology and Obstetrics & Gynecology

William Driscoll

Assistant Professor of Biology

José Duarte

Professor of Landscape Architecture

Edward Dudley

Professor of Food Science; Director of E. coli Reference Center

Mechanisms driving toxin production in Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli; use of genome sequencing to track pathogen transmission during foodborne outbreaks

Luis Duque

Assistant Research Professor of Storage Root Physiology

Bertrand Eardly

Professor of Biology

Yasser El-Manzalawy

Assistant Research Professor of Information Sciences and Technology

yme2@psu.edu

Herschel Elliott

Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering

Paul Esker

Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Field Crop Pathology

Terry Etherton

Distinguished Professor of Animal Nutrition

Gary Felton

Professor and Department Head of Entomology

Plant-herbivore interactions. Adaptive responses of herbivores to plant defenses. Herbivore cues recognized by plants with specific focus on biochemical and molecular analysis of salivary secretions.

Erika Ganda

Assistant Professor of Food Animal Microbiomes

Developing practical ways to leverage the microbiome to improve food safety and improve food production animals' production efficiency.

David Geiser

Professor of Mycology

Molecular evolutionary genetics of pathogenic and toxigenic fungi.

Ilias Georgakopoulos-Soares

Assistant Professor
The development and implementation of new computational methods in genomics and molecular biology, with the aim of identifying genetic biomarkers for the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of human diseases, including bacterial and viral infections…

izg5139@psu.edu

Leland Glenna

Professor of Rural Sociology and Science, Technology, and Society

llg3@psu.edu

Hassan Gourama

Associate Professor of Food Science

Joshua Gross

Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Biobehavioral Health

Molecular mechanisms underlying food reward and its downstream dysregulation of metabolism, particularly in response to obesogenic diets.

jdg6119@psu.edu

Beth Gugino

Professor of Vegetable Pathology

Kevin Hockett

Huck Early Career Chair; Assistant Professor of Microbial Ecology

Biological Control, Biology and Ecology of Plant-Microbe and Plant-Environment Interactions, Microbial Ecology and Population Biology Faculty

Raymond Hohl

University Professor of Oncology; Professor of Pharmacology

Louisa Holmes

Assistant Professor of Geography and Demography

Vasant Honavar

Huck Chair in Biomedical Data Sciences and AI; Professor and Edward Frymoyer Chair of Information Sciences and Technology

Statistical machine learning algorithms for predictive modeling; modeling and inference of biological networks; characterization and prediction of protein-protein, protein-RNA, and protein-DNA interactions.

Roberto Iglesias-Prieto

Professor of Biology

María del Mar Jiménez Gasco

Professor of Plant Pathology and Environmental Mictobiology; Head, Dept of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology

Seogchan Kang

Professor of Plant Pathology & Environmental Microbiology

Genetic and cellular mechanisms underpinning plant-fungal interactions with Arabidopsis thaliana and Fusarium oxysporum as a model system. Molecular genetics and comparative genomics of fungal plant pathogens. Bioinformatics.

Camelia Kantor

Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives; Associate Research Professor
Camelia Kantor is a highly interdisciplinary geospatial researcher and integrator. Before joining Huck, her prior work involved HBCU teaching, research and training and national security related program assessment and management. Her research…

cmk6719@psu.edu

Mihail Kantor

Assistant Research Professor

Vivek Kapur

Associate Director, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences; Huck Distinguished Chair in Global Health; Professor of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases

The basic mechanisms by which pathogenic microbes successfully infect, colonize, and cause disease in their hosts.

Rupinder Kaur

Assistant Research Professor
Uncovering the mechanism behind Wolbachia-induced drive system named Cytoplasmic Incompatibility (CI) that results in embryonic lethality when modified sperms from Wolbachia-infected males fertilize eggs from uninfected females. CI is currently at…

r.kaur@psu.edu

Kenneth Keiler

Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Small RNAs and protein localization in bacterial development and antimicrobial drug discovery.

Joshua Kellogg

Emphasis Area Representative, Molecular Toxicology; Assistant Professor of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences
Development of new metabolomics tools for chemical and biological characterization of complex systems. Discovery of new natural products from plants and microorganisms with novel bioactivity against pathogenic fungi and neglected tropical diseases.…

Girish Kirimanjeswara

Emphasis Area Representative, Immunology and Infectious Disease; Associate Professor of Veterinary and Biomedical Science

Establishing the Virulence Factors

Imhoi Koo

Research Assistant Professor

Develop pipeline and algorithms of metabolomics data processing.

iuk41@psu.edu

David Koslicki

Chair, Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Bioinformatics and Genomics; Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Biology

Developing efficient algorithms to extract insight from high-throughput sequencing data.

Jasna Kovac

Lester Earl and Veronica Casida Career Development Professor of Food Safety; Associate Professor of Food Science

Integrating epidemiological, microbiological, molecular and omics methods to better understand microbial pathogenic potential, antimicrobial resistance, and epidemiology of foodborne pathogens.

Gretchen Kuldau

Associate Professor of Plant Pathology

Todd Lajeunesse

Professor of Biology

Microbial Ecology and Evolution

Derek Lee

Associate Research Professor

dxl754@psu.edu

Mechelle Lewis

Associate Professor Neurology and Pharmacology

mml19@psu.edu

Dajiang Liu

Co-Chair, Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Bioinformatics and Genomics; Professor of Public Health Sciences and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Developing novel methods to analyze very large scale datasets in order to identify genes that are responsible for disease, understand the disease mechanism, and gain clinical insights.

Aron Lukacher

Professor and Chair of Microbiology & Immunology

ael17@psu.edu

Hong Ma

Huck Chair in Plant Reproductive Development and Evolution; Professor of Biology

Plant development under favorable and stressful conditions; phylogeny and evolutionary biology of plant groups containing major crops and ecologically important species.

Thomas Ma

Professor and Chair of Medicine

tum606@psu.edu

Jennifer Macalady

Director of the Ecology Institute; Professor of Geosciences
Microbial interactions with earth materials: soils, sediments, solutes, atmospheric gases, minerals, and rocks. Early evolution of Earth’s biosphere, including photosynthesis and sulfur cycling. Microbial ecology, environmental omics, microbial…

Siela Maximova

Research Professor of Plant Biotechnology Co-Director, Endowed Program in the Molecular Biology of Cocoa

Molecular basis of plant-pathogen and plant-endophyte interactions. Biotechnology of tree crops. Development of sustainable energy crops.

Elizabeth McGraw

Professor and Huck Scholar in Entomology

The genetics of vector, pathogen and symbiont interactions.

Timothy McNellis

Associate Professor of Plant Pathology & Environmental Microbiology

Genetics, molecular biology and physiology of plant interactions with phytopathogenic bacteria. Signal transduction events involved in plant disease resistance. Genetic control of plant hypersensitive cell death.

Monica Medina

Professor of Biology

Scott Medina

Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Design of bio-inspired functional materials that serve as new tools in precision medicine. Understanding how peptides and proteins assemble at natural and non-natural interfaces to form organized structures with unique biochemical functions. The…

Michael Messina

Department Head and Professor of Ecosystem Science and Management

Cristin Millett

Professor of Art

Tim Miyashiro

Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

How bacteria adapt to a host environment. The mutualistic symbiosis established between the Hawaiian bobtail squid (Euprymna scolopes) and a bioluminescent bacterium (Vibrio fischeri).

Tami Mysliwiec

Associate Professor of Biology

Meera Surendran Nair

Assistant Clinical Professor

Ruth Nissly

Assistant Research Professor

rah38@psu.edu

Rimnoma Serge Ouedraogo

Assistant Research Professor of Entomology

Leslie Parent

Professor of Medicine and Microbiology & Immunology

Andrew Patterson

Professor and Huck Chair of Molecular Toxicology; Faculty Oversight, Metabolomics Core Facility

The Patterson lab is focused on understanding the host-metabolite-microbiome axis

John Pecchia

Assistant Research Professor

Kari Peter

Assistant Research Professor of Tree Fruit Pathology

Kristina Petersen

Assistant Research Professor

Mauricio Pontes

Assistant Professor of Pathology

mxh1355@psu.edu

Beth Potter

Associate Professor of Biology

Divya Prakash

Assistant Research Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Andrew Read

Interim Senior Vice President for Research; Director, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences; Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and Entomology; Eberly Professor of Biotechnology

The ecology and evolutionary genetics of infectious disease.

John Regan

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Biological treatment processes, molecular microbial ecology, bioenergy production.

Tanya Renner

Associate Professor of Entomology

Evolution of chemical and structural defense. Molecular evolution, evolutionary genomics, and transcriptomics. Origins and evolution of carnivorous plants.

Amena Rizk

Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology Graduate Student

avr6035@psu.edu

Bob Roberts

Professor and Head of Food Science

Veronica Roman-Reyna

Assistant Professor of Global Change Pathology

I work on understanding how plant-associated microbes change in agricultural systems.

Cristina Rosa

Associate Professor of Plant Pathology & Environmental Microbiology
Plant Virology, interaction of plant viruses with their insects as vectors and with their plant hosts. Virus evolution, exploration of plant viromes, viral co-infections, effect of climate change on viral resistant breaking strains. Use of…

Richard Roush

Dean, College of Agricultural Sciences

Amir Sheikhi

Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering
Micro- and nanoengineered soft materials for medicine and the environment; microfluidic-enabled biomaterials for tissue engineering and regeneration; living materials; next-generation bioadhesives, tissue sealants, and hemostatic agents; hydrogels…

Justin Silverman

Assistant Professor of Information Sciences and Technology

Statistical methods for the analysis of biomedical data (or any other interesting data/questions)

Vishal Singh

Assistant Professor of Nutritional Physiology and Microbiome

Mary Ann Smith

Biology Lecturer (Schuylkill)

The isolation of microorganisms with the potential for antibiotic production within soil and sourdough systems

Joshua Smyth

Distinguished Professor of Biobehavioral Health and Medicine

Bruce Stanley

Director of the Section of Research Resources, Hershey

Moriah Szpara

Associate Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Biology
How genetic variation influences the outcomes of viral infection, particularly for neurotropic viruses such as herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) and HSV-2, using high-throughput sequencing, comparative genomics, neuronal cultures, and genetic…

Vaskar Thapa

Assistant Research Professor

vut2@psu.edu

Claire Thomas

Associate Professor of Biology and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Roles of the cytoskeleton at the cell membrane in epithelial cells, including issues of cell polarity and adhesion, cell signaling, and morphogenesis.

Cheryl Thompson

Professor of Public Health Sciences

The intersection of behavioral, lifestyle and environmental factors with inherited variation to influence individual risk of cancer or cancer outcomes.