Faculty, program staff, instructors, and mentors listed for the 2024 Community Phages program.
Faculty, program staff, instructors, and mentors listed for this program year.
Faculty sponsor · Department of Microbiology
Tom has been interested in phages since graduate school, where he studied how phages lyse bacterial hosts. His lab studies bacterial cell biology, cell-surface biogenesis, and corynebacterial phages as tools for understanding how this group of bacteria grows.
Faculty partner · Biomedical Informatics and Microbiology
Michael studies bacterial evolution and computational genomics, with a focus on antibiotic resistance, horizontal gene transfer, and the roles phages play in both.
Faculty partner · Department of Microbiology
Philip studies how cells sense and defend against viral infection. His lab uses biochemistry to understand antiviral immunity in humans and bacteria, including the ways bacteria detect phage replication.
Past faculty partner · Department of Microbiology
Angelika studies bacterial cell-envelope biology and has used phages as tools to move DNA between bacteria. She joined the program while visiting HMS from Imperial College London.
Program operations and lab manager · Bernhardt Lab
James is a former bench scientist and current lab manager. He coordinates lab setup, materials, safety, schedule support, and daily operations so students and instructors have what they need for the summer research work.
Lead instructor · Baym Lab alumna
Ellie completed her PhD in the Baym lab developing methods to isolate environmental phages. She leads environmental sampling, phage isolation, and day-to-day instruction for the discovery work.
Past instructor · Bernhardt Lab alumna
Amelia studies how phages interact with host bacteria during infection, and how those interactions teach us about bacterial growth, division, pathogen evolution, and microbial communities.
Past instructor · Dove Lab
Brendan helped students with bench work, troubleshooting, and student mentoring during wet-lab phage discovery.
Past instructor · Kranzusch Lab
Sam studies the molecular basis of how viruses evade host immune defenses. His work focuses on how bacteria sense phage infection and how phages evolve to avoid detection.
Past instructor · Kranzusch Lab
Alex studies molecular weapons and defenses in phage-bacteria conflict. He is especially interested in electron microscopy and in using phages to discover new principles of molecular biology.
Instructor · Kranzusch Lab
Doug studies how cells defend themselves from viruses and how viruses avoid those defenses. He helps students use new phages to ask how bacteria and phages act against one another.
Past instructor · Fortune Lab
Jane studies the genetic evolution of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. She is interested in microorganisms at the host-pathogen interface and in what bacterial-phage co-evolution can teach us.
Past instructor · Helaine Lab
Kristen studies Klebsiella and has worked on how phages influence bacterial evolution. She is interested in how diverse phages shape bacterial communities.