Department: Scholars

My name is Maria Morfín. I am originally from Mexico, but I immigrated when I was young to the U.S. and grew up in South Georgia. I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Engineering from the University of Georgia. Due to having to juggle full time work, full time school, and several other responsibilities, my research experiences were limited during my undergraduate studies. This is why I applied to the NIH PREP program. It offered a thorough and immersive opportunity for me to broaden my knowledge of research and training.

I worked in the laboratory of Dr. Ross Marklein (RAMLab) during my time at PREP. The focus of the lab is to develop high-throughput, single-cell profiling of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) to assess heterogeneity and use for translation of MSC therapies. My role was to optimize and create protocols for various assays by using MSC extracellular vesicles (EVs) to regulate microglia-dependent neuroinflammation in-vitro. Additionally, I developed and executed protocols to establish a link between microglia morphology and metabolism to use as a read-out of microglia cell health post-EV treatment. Additionally, by being in RAMLab, I was able to form connections with great researchers and scientists, such as my PI and mentor, as well as Steven Stice, a world renown expert in the field of pluripotent stem cell biology. This allowed for me to tour ArunA Biomedical, the first company to commercialize a product derived from human pluripotent stem cells, and further expand my knowledge and experiences with clinical applications of research.

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My name is Lauren Mahoney and I am from Boston, MA. I received a BS in biology from Emory University, where I first became involved in research in Dr. Stacy McAllister’s lab study endometriosis disease mechanisms and treatment via drug repurposing. After this initial exposure, I knew I wanted to gain more hands-on laboratory experience and to pursue a graduate education. The PREP program offered the unique opportunity to gain this experience while preparing me for the future.

As a PREP scholar, I worked in Dr. Jarrod Mousa’s lab in the Center for Vaccines and Immunology (CVI) to study the use of human monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to treat and prevent infection by targeting highly conserved bacterial surface proteins. My project applied this methodology to Streptococcus pyogenes or Group A Strep (GAS), a significant cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. During my time in the Mousa Lab, I was able to isolate several antigen specific antibodies and developed a wide breadth of techniques and skills that will serve me greatly going forward.

Next, I will pursue a PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Comparative Biomedical Sciences program.

My name is Leticia Do Amaral. I was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and I moved to the United States when I was very young. I grew up in Georgia and obtained a B.S. in Biology from the University of Georgia. During my undergrad years, I became acquainted with the world of research and quickly decided that I wanted to pursue a career in this field. After I graduated, I took one year off and got a job as a laboratory technician, and the next year I was given the opportunity to join PREP for the 2022-2023 year cohort. I always had an interest in working with infectious diseases, specifically diseases of poverty. Prior to the beginning of my year with PREP I had experience working with Toxoplasma gondii and Trypanosoma cruzi, both of which are protozoan parasites that cause devastating diseases that particularly impact underdeveloped and impoverished communities. I wanted to further explore this interest in PREP because I knew that this was something that I was passionate about.

I decided to apply for PREP because I knew I wanted to go to graduate school, but I was not sure how to get myself there. During the laboratory rotations, I rotated in several labs with amazing mentors and students. I ended up choosing to join the Cassera lab. Dr. Cassera’s lab studies Plasmodium falciparum, a protozoan parasite that causes Malaria. The lab is in the drug discovery realm and has an objective to look for new drug chemotherapies for the treatment of malaria. Malaria is a serious and sometimes fatal disease that affects primarily pregnant women and children. Malaria in humans can be caused by different species of Plasmodium, with falciparum being the deadliest one. Aside from being a devastating disease that causes severe illness and sometimes death, Malaria is a drain on global economies and infectious disease control organizations. Since it is endemic in primarily poor regions, it creates a cycle of disease that is spread due to poverty and poor infrastructure. Needless to say, it is important to continue to study this disease and endeavor to find novel treatments for it.

My time in PREP was empowering and motivating. I decided that I wanted to stay at the University of Georgia for my graduate studies, so I applied and got in to the Infectious Disease program and I am continuing my work in the Cassera lab. I am still on the fence about career options because there are so many great things that I could do with my degree and experience once I am finished. Nevertheless, I am grateful for my time in PREP, and I attribute a lot of my academic growth to the program.

Hi everyone! My name is Mya Covington. I was born and raised in Rome, Georgia with the help of my very large family. I attended the University of Georgia with the intent to broadly study Biology for my undergraduate degree even though I have always been interested in the smaller side of life. I continuously questioned, “how exactly do pathogens cause disease in much bigger organisms?” Early into my undergraduate degree, I was able to do microbial work with anaerobic methanogens and that further solidified my deep interest and curiosity in microorganisms. I then shifted my research to plant genetics studying evolutionary changes in phylloquinone biosynthetic genes between photosynthetic and holoparasitic plants using an expression system in Escherichia coli. I have never put myself into a box when it comes to research because my goal is to be a well-rounded scientist, and I got to develop my passion for molecular biology, plants, and bacteria during this experience.

I graduated with my degree in Microbiology and was unsure of the next steps I would need to take to become a well-trained biomedical scientist. With the much-appreciated guidance from my PI at the time, Dr. CJ Tsai, I was introduced to the PREP program at UGA. During my year, I was introduced formally to infectious disease research as I had always wanted. I worked this year on a project that investigated how mitogen-activated protein kinase inflammatory signaling contributes to the fitness of Toxoplasma gondii. At the end of my PREP year, I can see tremendous growth from initial unsureness in my science and education, but I exited the program with so much knowledge and support going into my graduate school career.

I am currently in the Integrated Life Sciences PhD program at the University of Georgia. Drs. Erin and Kim spent a very dedicated year advising and helping us develop the tools to succeed in graduate school. I feel more than prepared to find a dissertation lab that offers me the mentorship, environment, and science I need. As I complete my lab rotations, I am broad in my search spreading across multiple departments such as infectious diseases, microbiology, and genetics.

Hello, my name is Cristian Sanlatte Reyes and I was born and raised in Carolina, Puerto Rico. I have B.S. in Industrial Microbiology from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez campus. My research interests focus on plant-microbe-environment interactions. I believe that environmental science is a very underrepresented discipline with a heavy toll on all aspects of life as we know it. Therefore, important questions that are of my interests are: how do plant and microbe interactions work? Furthermore, how are these affected by environmental stressors that are occurring due to climate change? Seeking to gather a more robust research training, the NIH Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Program at the University of Georgia (NIH PREP@UGA) gave me the chance to venture within these environmental questions while simultaneously giving me the experience of preparing myself to make the best decision for a graduate PhD program. During my time at UGA, I first worked in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Dr. Michael Adam’s laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Jennifer Goff and Farris Poole. Here I worked with tungsten utilization by the anaerobic denitrifying microorganisms Zoogloea ramigera. The main objective was to determine the effects of toxic and essential metals on the microbe by monitoring its growth, measuring metal uptake, and nitrogen oxide production by plate assays and gas chromatography. Next, I worked in the Marine Sciences department with Dr. Mary Ann Moran under the supervision of William Shroer and Christa Smith. Here I worked on the use of random barcode transposon sequencing (RBTn-Seq) library growth trends upon diverse ocean metabolites. The main objectives were to discover and annotate unknown gene-substrate uptake functions and determine whether transposon location inside the gene of interest affects its expression. Lastly, I took a Bioprocessing Technology course given by Dr. David Blum and T.A./Dr. Marley Brimberry. Here I learned the theory and practice of biotechnological biomanufacturing. The course guided me to understanding and performing from the complete upstream (production) to downstream (purification) process of a recombinant TURBO RED fluorescent protein (TURBO-RFP) within E. coli. I learned how to perform industrial laboratory techniques such as bacterial transformation, cell lysis through sonication, immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC), hydrophobic interactions chromatography (HIC) and SDS-PAGE analysis. My experience within UGA exposed me to a varied, strong and research-intensive environment where I definitely felt I was gathering an extensive amount of training that boosted my confidence as a student trainee. They did not only equip me with a great set of research skills, but also helped me recognize what type of research, community, and program I wanted to apply for a PhD program. PREP@UGA gave me an experience that surpassed my expectations. I highly recommend incoming students to take advantage of all the faculty and resources, plus make sure to identify what are your requirements as a scientist and as a person, for your incoming PhD degree.

After finishing my program at UGA, I am currently starting my Microbial Biology PhD program at Rutgers University in New Brunswick!

Hi, my name is Armoni Mayes and I am from Norfolk, Virginia. I graduated from Old Dominion University with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences in 2021. Before attending Old Dominion, I attended a small community college for two years because I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do after graduating high school. After trying out a couple of different majors I finally settled on biology, because I had an amazing biology professor my sophomore year that made me fall in love with the subject. Once I transferred to Old Dominion, I continued on the biological sciences track but by the time graduation was coming around I still did not have any hands-on research experience which I would need in order to apply to PhD schools. I was recommended to apply to a PREP by a mentor at Old Dominion, and the University of Georgia’s PREP program was the perfect fit for what I was looking for as far as research areas. I ended up choosing to work in the Garfinkel Lab (Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology), which works with a retrotransposon called Ty1 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (budding yeast). Ty1 is a class 1 transposable element that utilizes a copy-and-paste mechanism of replicating in the genome, and its life cycle is comparable to a retrovirus life cycle. My research project was focused on a functional loop in the n-terminus domain(NTD) of the Gag protein because the structure had recently been solved by collaborators of the Garfinkel lab. In comparison to closely related retroelements, such as Copia and Ty3, Ty1 had a considerably longer length of amino acids that make up this loop. This loop is dynamic with two different conformations, and it was of interest to investigate how the loop impacts Ty1 in its function and possible assembly. Mutations that deleted this functional loop were designed, with one mutation deleting the entire loop(M1) and a second mutation that only deleted a small portion of the loop(M2). Both of the mutants lost the ability to transpose, did not have detectable protease, reverse transcriptase and integrase protein levels, and also had an assembly defect. Being able to work in the Garfinkel lab taught me a myriad of biochemical techniques, writing, and technical skills that I will carry with me through my PhD and beyond. I applied and was accepted into the Microbiology and Immunology PhD program at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA.

Hello, my name is Barbara Talavera-Figueroa, and I am from the north coast of Puerto Rico. I graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo Campus with a B.Sc. in Microbiology with a medical emphasis. Looking back on my childhood years, I have always admired the wonders of science that further sparked my curiosity to delve into the world of science and explore its limitless boundaries. During my undergraduate science courses and research experiences, I really wanted to know more about pathogens and how they have the potential to not only change the evolution of humanity, but also the course of history. Therefore, I came to realize the importance of understanding their pathogenicity in causing diseases and the urgent need to develop therapeutic interventions. However, during my undergraduate studies, I had very limited opportunities to pursue training in biomedical research which motivated me to apply to the NIH Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) at the University of Georgia, since it was aligned with my research interests in infectious diseases and provided me an extensive research experience. During my time at PREP@UGA, I joined Dr. Harvill’s lab within the Department of Infectious Diseases to study the bacterial pathogenesis of Bordetella spp. and their host-pathogen interactions using in vitro and in vivo models. Getting to work with this respiratory pathogen enhanced my interests in bacterial pathogenesis. Thus, I had the opportunity to join Dr. Tompkins’ lab at the Center for Vaccines and Immunology (CVI) to study bacterial and viral co-infections. My project was to establish an in vivo model to investigate the interactions between Streptococcus pneumoniae and influenza A virus, and to understand how an existing pneumococcal infection can change after a viral infection to cause respiratory tract disease. Overall, my experience in this program helped me gain confidence as a scientist, explore many aspects of bacteriology, and prepare for my transition to graduate school.

After PREP@UGA, I will begin my doctoral studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.