In our research group EVERYONE is welcome.
Catalina Cuellar-Gempeler, PhD.
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I am microbial ecologist interested in metacommunity ecology with a special focus on host-associated microbial communities. I was born in Bogotá, in Colombia, and grew up in between the city and my grandpa's coffee farm in the little town of Sasaima. I moved to the US to go to graduate school with the goal of studying the ecology of microbes associated with animals and plants. Microbes and ecology have continued to capture my curiosity and imagination! I moved to Humboldt in 2018 and made a home with my little family that includes 2 humans, 2 cats and many microbes. . |
CGlab Staff
Cozy Giusti - Lab manager |
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Cozy has been instrumental in keeping everything going and working this year. In her role as lab manager, Cozy is leading qPCR runs, biochemical assays and our plant collection.
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Graduate Students
Gavin Sutter |
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Gavin completed his BSc here at Cal Poly Humboldt and began working in the lab in the fall of 2023. His work focuses on further understanding bacterial dispersal and colonization of pitcher plant leaves. Prior to discovering his passion for studying microbes, Gavin was a climbing and raft guide and when not in the lab he can most likely be found enjoying the local rivers and rocks.
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Ramira Mota |
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Ramira started their Masters at the lab in the Fall 2022 bringing a wealth of experience in plant-microbe associations. They will be exploring microbe diversity function diversity in both above ground and below ground pitcher plant structures.
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Amelia Jackson |
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Amelia joined us in the Fall 2022 and will be working on further understanding the dynamics of microbial diversity and function within pitcher plant leaves. Amelia comes to us with a deep love for mathematical principles and ecological theory aiming to help us bridge theory with experiments.
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Jonas Sotingco |
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Jonas started his Master’s in Fall 2020. He is interested in microbial/plant interactions and their results on plant growth. His pastimes include hiking, cross-country road trips, and TV/movie analysis
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Alumni
Fiona Connor |
Fiona joined us from the Department of Engineering and Natural resources (co -adviced by Eileen Cashman) with a keen interest in microbes in constructed marshes. Fiona developed an interdisciplinary approach to track microplastic removal and their influence on bacterial communities and nitrogen cycling. She is now an assistant engineer at Prunuske Chatham, Inc.
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Victoria Cifelli |
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Victoria completed her BSc at HSU and decided to join the team to look into the role of microbial communities in mediating disease. Victoria completed her Maststers in the spring 2023, where she explored viral pathogens on Oysters. Victoria is moved at lightning speed through her molecular work! She moved on to less foggy pastures in the bay area to pursue her lab/molecular career.
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Parker Lund |
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Parker has a BSc in marine biology and previously worked in plant pathogen testing. They are broadly interested in microbiomes, host-microbe interactions, symbiosis, and pathogens in marine systems. Their master's research focused on characterizing the anemone microbiome and investigating the impacts of environmental stress on community composition. Outside of the lab, Parker enjoys hiking with their dog, photographing bacteria colonies, and playing video games. Now a PhD student at UBC!
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Megan Teigen |
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Megan complete her Master’s in the Fall 2022. Her project aimed to better understand how microbes impact prey degradation and nutrient acquisition from the perspective of chemical interactions. After finishing her graduate studies, Megan is looking for new adventures in molecular and cell biology and now coursing her PhD at the University of Connecticut! In her free time she likes to go for long trail runs and collect pictures of interesting looking plants and fungi from her outdoor adventures.
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Sandrine Grandmont-Lemire (Thompson) |
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Sandrine completed her Master's in May2022 and we miss her, Her thesis investigated spatial and temporal changes in microbial community diversity and function with an overarching goal of better understand drivers of nitrogen cycling. After some (microbial) adventures in Alaska, Sandrine has returned to help us run the growing and growing lab! You can now find her in her new role as lab manager where she helps us all to do our best every day! She is now working with the Chilkat Indian Village as project manager.
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Taylor Krilanovich |
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Taylor completed her honors thesis in the CGlab in the Fall 2021, focusing on regulatory pathways in microbial function. Taylor went on to pursue her Graduate studies in Molecular Biosciences at Washington State University!
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Opportunities
We are looking for graduate and undergraduate students to join our team!
Your name could be featured here!
Left to right: Kekoa Baisel, Travis Nickols, Megan Williford, Sandrine Grandmont-Lemire (Thompson), Jose Alejandro Bravo.
Left to right: Kekoa Baisel, Travis Nickols, Megan Williford, Sandrine Grandmont-Lemire (Thompson), Jose Alejandro Bravo.
Honor roll and lab stories
Cody Ellis, Everett Frame and Edmund Thiao (all returning!) joined in the Spring 2024 for a bioinformatics adventure into microbial communities. We developped a semester long program that covers major topics in microbial community ecology and empowers students to analyze their own amplicon sequence data.
Everett Frame, Edmund Thiao, Anna Curry, Gavin Sutter, Emily Shae worked tiredlessly under Cozy's guidance during the fall 2023 to isolate extremophiles from pitcher plant fluid, leaves, seeds, soil and water.
Carissa Forest and Mathew Blue Peters stayed with us for some time as assistant lab techs contributing to degradation experiments, fly upkeep and student instruction. We miss them!
Cody (Kar) Ellis, Mathew Blue Peters, Madeleine Claire Garza, Carissa Forest, Jamie Schoeffler, Sierra Vasinthascha (2022) - worked on characterizing bacterial traits, revising the literature for diversity-function relationships in bacteria and supporting graduate student research.
Shay Konradsdottir, Eli Allen and Pamela Figueroa (2020) - Worked on developing code to launch python programming, metagenomic analyses and applications to zebrafish microbiome dynamics.
Robyn Botch (2020) -with Sandrine: review the literature regarding microbial organisms in marsh habitats.
Brooke Roehrick , Breana Vincent and Esmeralda Villarreal (2020): trait trade off and bacterial population growth experiments.
Megan Williford (2020): pitcher plant tissue culture project.
Eric Malekos (2019-2020): bioinformatic tools
A. H. Huebner (2019-2020): mycorrhizae in the roots of Astragalus applegatei
José Alejandro Bravo, Dan Perez-Sornia, Erik Malekos and Marissa Monaco: Degradation experiment 2019, isolation of pitcher plant bacteria
Luisa Segovia (2019): coding tutorials, DNA extractions, anemone microbial community, mycorrhizae.
Travis Nickols (2019): pitcher plant tissue culture project, anemone microbial community -DNA extractions.
Kekoa Blaisdell (2018-2019): Banana slug microbiome
