Faculty
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 the forefront of approaches targeting pest populations and mosquito-borne viral diseases, and can also impact arthropod speciation.
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. Bioanalytical techniques to probe the mechanism of action and basic biology of these target organisms. Ethnobotany and indigenous knowledge surrounding plant-based medicine.
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.
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.
Dajiang Liu
Co-Chair, Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Bioinformatics and Genomics; Professor of Public Health Sciences and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Developing statistical and AI methods and experimental approaches to integrate multi-omics data with GWAS to study host x microbiome interaction, Alzheimer's diseases, smoking and drinking addiction, and lupus in diverse populations.
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.
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 biogeography.
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.
