Alumni from the Wright Lab
Research Assistant Professor
Ann DonnellyPhD Chemistry @ Princeton University
B.A. Chemistry @ Drew University
Ann was a Research Assistant Professor engaged in many of the lab's projects. After the Wright lab, Ann returned to industry as a Senior Scientist at FLIR.
Research Specialists
Bradley Nanna (2019 - 2020)B.S. Cellular and Molecular Biology @ Liberty University
Brad was a Research Specialist working on the maintenance of vancomycin resistance by Staphylococcus aureus. Brad now has a position at Eastern Carolina University.
Krizia-Ivana Udquim (2019 - 2020)MPhil Applied Biological Anthropology @ University of Cambridge
B.S. Biological Sciences; BA Cultural Anthropology @ University of Maryland - Baltimore County
Krizia was a Research Specialist working on acquisition of Zerbaxa resistance by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Krizia left the Wright lab to enter medical school at the University of Florida.
Postdocs
Caroline Birer (2018 - 2020)PhD Molecular Ecology @ University of French Guiana
M.S. Chemistry @ Paris-Sud University
PharmD @ Clermont Auvergne University
Caroline was a postdoc studying intercellular communication in the microbiome using small molecule mass spectrometry. In the Wright lab she developed a custom 3D printed platform for high-throughput interrogation of intercellular signaling molecules. She left the Wright lab to become an Assistant Professor at the University of Tours in France.
Travis De Wolfe (website) (2018 - 2020)Ph.D. Food Science @ UW-Madison
M.S. Comparative Biomedical Sciences @ UW-Madison
B.S. Natural Sciences @ UW-Madison
Travis was a NIH T15 fellow in Wright lab working on optimizing high-throughput workflows for microbiome analysis. He is now a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research funded Postdoctoral Fellow with the Department of Pediatrics at the University of British Columbia where his research interests include inflammatory bowel diseases, host-microbe interactions, and ecology of the gut microbiome. His goal is to use translational science and biomedical informatics to better understand the role of the gut microbiome in modulating mammalian health.
Graduate Students
Deepank Korandla (2017 - 2019)M.S. Computational Biology @ Carnegie Mellon University
B.A. Biology @ Carnegie Mellon University
Deepank was a student in the Master’s in Computational Biology program at Carnegie Mellon University. In the Wright lab he worked on computational problems at the intersection of biology and genomics. After graduation, Deepank accepted a position as a bioinformatician at Kintai Therapeutics and is now working at Merck in Boston.
Lauren Rost (2018 - 2019)Biomedical Informatics Fellow @ University of Pittsburgh
B.A. Biology @ St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Lauren completed her M.S. in Biomedical Informatics while in the Wright lab. Her research involved analyzing antibiotic prescription guidelines for best stewardship practices.
Undergraduate Researchers
Aidan Lakshman (2019 - 2020)B.S. Mathematics @ University of Central Florida
Aidan interned with the Wright Lab as part of the University of Pittsburgh Research Training Program. His work involved using algebraic rearrangement theory to identify large-scale genome mutations in prokaryotes. Aidan is now a PhD student in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Pitt.
Nithya Narayanan (2019 - 2020)M.S. Bioengineering @ University of Pittsburgh
Nithya was an undergraduate studying Bioengineering at Pitt. Her work involved developing culturing methods for microorganisms isolated from soil. After graduating, Nithya entered the NIH Post-bac IRTA program at the Histology Core Lab in the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She is now doing research on multiplexing neural imaging techniques.
Adithya Murali (2017)B.A. Computer Science @ University of Wisconsin-Madison
Adithya was a Computer Science student at UW-Madison who performed research during summer 2017 in the Wright Lab. He developed machine learning approaches to improving taxonomic classification of phylogenetic marker sequences. Along the way, he learned a lot about microbial ecology and plans to continue studying bioinformatics as a graduate student someday. After graduating he started a job in investment banking at Deutsche Bank.
Vibha Reddy (2018)Ohio State University
Vibha was an undergraduate student pursuing her BS in Neuroscience and BA in Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the Ohio State University. As a summer researcher in the Wright lab, she is assembling artificial communities of isolates from the human gut microbiome. After graduating she plans to go to back to school to study biomedical sciences.
High School Students
Alina Ahmad (2021)