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.
Allison Way (2020 - 2022)B.S. Biology @ Robert Morris University
Alli was a Research Specialist working on inter-cellular communication among soil bacteria. She left the Wright lab to begin studying to become a Physicians Assistant.
Sofia Garman (2021 - 2022)B.S. Biology & Spanish @ Washington & Jefferson College
Sofia was a Research Specialist studying the combinatory effects of antibiotics and their potential to combat antibiotic resistance.
Postdocs
Gabriela Sycz PhD in Biological Chemistry – Molecular Microbiology @ University of Buenos Aires
B.S. & M.S. in Biological Sciences @ University of Buenos Aires
Gabriela (Gaby) was a postdoc characterizing novel biosynthetic gene clusters in naturally antibiotic producing bacteria. Her main goal was to find ways to fight the problem of bacterial antibiotic resistance.
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
Andrew Beckley (2018 - 2021)M.S. Biomedical Informatics @ University of Pittsburgh
B.S. Microbiology @ University of Rochester
Andrew received his Master's in Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh. His research in the Wright lab involved mining electronic health records for correlations between antibiotic prescribing and clinical outcomes. After graduation, Andrew returned to industry to apply his new skills in data analytics.
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
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.
Summer Students
Adelle Fernando (2019)
Alina Ahmad (2021)
Jordan Pater (2022)