Microbiology: Faculty and Staff

A message from the Directors

Microbes are both the cause of and the solution to many of humanity’s grand challenges in human health, sustainable agriculture, protection of natural environments, cleaning up polluted environments, and engineered systems.

In the coming decades, microbiologists will be critical to understanding the microbes in these systems, controlling them, and putting them to work for us. The Microbiology Graduate Program educates students broadly in microbiology, so that you will be equipped to address any of these grand challenges. Whether you work on nutrient cycles, human disease, or microbial process engineering, you will learn the laboratory, analytical, and bioinformatic tools needed to ask and answer questions of global importance.

When you join the Microbiology Graduate Program at UD, you will join a vibrant community of microbiologists with faculty in 14 departments across campus, including Biology, Marine Science and Policy, Geology, Plant and Soil Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering. This breadth gives students access to an extensive range of equipment, collaborators, and expertise. Regardless of the home department, our goal is to characterize the microbes in different environments – from the human body to water to soil and sediment – and understand how they work, so that we can put them to work for us.

We hope you will join us!

Clara Chan


Professor, Earth, Ocean & Environment, Co-Director, Microbiology Graduate Program
 302-831-1819

Wendy Feller


Graduate Services Coordinator
 

Nicole Donofrio


Professor of Pathology Co-Director, Microbiology Graduate Program
 302-831-1372
Name/Profile Email College Research Focus
Ryan Arsenault rja@udel.edu CANR Microbiome influence on animal gut function and dysfunction
Harsh Bais hbais@udel.edu CANR Plant microbe interactions and phytochemistry
Mona Batish batish@udel.edu CHS Molecular and cellular cancer biology
Amy Biddle asbiddle@udel.edu CANR The equine microbiome in health and disease
Jennifer Biddle jfbiddle@udel.edu CEOE Sediment microbial metagenomics and biogeochemistry
Sam Biswas biswassb@udel.edu CHS Human Papillomavirus family (HPV) induced oncogenesis and mechanism of DNA replication in pathogenic bacteria
Mark Blenner blenner@udel.edu COE Synbio, metabolic engineering, functional genomics, microbiome engineering
Fidelma Boyd fboyd@udel.edu CAS Genomic determinants of host-pathogen interactions in Vibrio
Daniel Cha cha@udel.edu COE Microbial conversion of food waste to high-value products
Clara Chan cschan@udel.edu CEOE Fe-oxidizing bacteria and geomicrobiology
Pei Chiu pei@udel.edu COE Bioremediation
Kathy Coyne kcoyne@udel.edu CEOE Harmful algal blooms and bacterial-algal interactions
Nicole Donofrio ndonof@udel.edu CANR Fungal-plant interactions, or fungal-bacterial interactions
Jeff Fuhrman fuhrmann@udel.edu CANR Ecology and diversity of nitrogen-fixing microbial populations in soil-plant systems
Catherine Grimes cgrimes@udel.edu CAS Chemical glycobiology and innate immunity
Thomas Hanson tehanson@udel.edu CEOE Microbial metabolism and ecology. Engineering autotrophic bacteria for production.
Yan Jin yjin@udel.edu CANR Microbial mediated changes of soil properties and processes; biophysical processes in the rhizosphere
Rolf Joerger rjoerger@udel.edu CANR Food borne pathogens
Kalmia Kniel kniel@udel.edu CANR Microbial food safety
Alyssa Koehler akoehler@udel.edu CANR Molecular and cellular plant-microbe interactions; fungal biology
Aditya Kunjapur kunjapur@udel.edu COE biological containment of microbes; live bacterial vaccine platforms; bacterial spore display of proteins
Kelvin Lee khl@udel.edu COE Development and application of high throughput proteomics
Julie Maresca jmaresca@udel.edu COE Metagenomics of interesting geochemical environments
Adam Marsh amarsh@udel.edu CEOE Environmental genomics and evolutionary signatures in genomic information
Robin Morgan morgan@udel.edu CAS, CANR Marek's disease virus molecular biology
Ramona Neuneubel neunr@udel.edu CAS Host-pathogen interactions in Legionella
Terry Papoutsakis epaps@udel.edu COE Clostridial engineering for butanol production
Vijay Parashar parashar@udel.edu CHS mechanistic basis of critical communication events during bacterial pathogenesis
Mark Parcells parcells@udel.edu CANR Viral genetics and infection
Shawn Polson polson@dbi.udel.edu COE, CEOE Microbial-viral interactions and bioinformatics
Sharon Rozovsky rozovsky@udel.edu CAS Selenoproteins and Se-NMR in structure-function studies
Karl Schmitz schmitzk@udel.edu CAS Clp proteases from Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Angelia Seyfferth angelias@udel.edu CANR Microbial influences on As accumulation in plants
Kevin Solomon kvs@udel.edu COE anaerobic fungi functional genomics
Molly Sutherland msuther@udel.edu CAS Cytochrome c biogenesis in bacteria
Adam Wallace afw@udel.edu CEOE Microbial control of mineralization reactions
Mark Warner mwarner@udel.edu CEOE Coral-phototroph symbioses and harmful algal blooms
Eric Wommack wommack@dbi.udel.edu CANR, CEOE Viral ecology and metagenomics
Cathy Wu wuc@udel.edu COE Genomics
Ryan Zurakowski ryanz@udel.edu COE Modeling host-pathogen interactions based in control theory