It’s been a busy year so far! Among the recent exciting news:
(1) Fourth year graduate student Norma Morella, AmGen summer scholar Annika Gomez (now heading to MIT for her NSF-funded Phd), undergraduate researchers Grant Wang, Michelle Leung, and I have just published a paper in Molecular Ecology showing the impact that a naturally occurring phage community can have on microbiome colonization of new host plants. In short: phages reduce bacterial density overall and seem to shape both the alpha and beta diversity of the phyllosphere during initial establishment.
(2) Third year graduate student Cathy Hernandez was accepted into the 2018 Australia-Americas PhD Research Internship Program to spend the upcoming summer working with Jeremy Barr at Monash University. More to come soon on this exciting project!
(3) First year graduate student Elijah Mehlferber has been awarded honorable mention for his NSF GRFP proposal this year. He is seeking to better understand how competition within the phyllosphere can alter plant susceptibility to pathogens.
(4) Incoming graduate student, and former summer AmGen Scholar, Reena Debray has been awarded a NSF GRFP for her planned work to examine the role phages play in shaping bacterial adaptation to host plants. Welcome back to the lab Reena!
(5) Undergraduate researcher Callie Cuff, who is completing her honors thesis in the lab examining host range of naturally occurring phages from pear trees, has been awarded the Nutritional Sciences Department Citation Award in recognition of her distinguished undergraduate work.
(6) Undergraduate researcher Shirley Zhang has been awarded a 2018 ASPB Summer Undergraduate Research (SURF) Fellowship to continue her amazing work on seed-associated microbiota and disease.
(7) Undergraduate researcher Kore Lum has been awarded a URAP Summer Award to support her research on phage-mediated selection of the plant pathogen P. syringae.
Congratulations to all!
Koskella Lab at UC Berkeley 