Community Phages is taught by HMS faculty, staff, graduate students, postdocs, alumni, and partner instructors who work with RCC students during the summer program.
Current contributors teach bench methods, bioinformatics, microscopy, figure preparation, and final posters.
Faculty sponsor · Department of Microbiology
Program years: 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
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.
Program operations and lab manager · Bernhardt Lab
Program years: 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
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
Program years: 2024, 2025, 2026
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.
Faculty partners connect the program to microbial genetics, phage biology, immunity, and computational genomics.
Faculty
Faculty partner · Department of Microbiology
Program years: 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
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.
Faculty
Faculty partner · Biomedical Informatics and Microbiology
Program years: 2022, 2023, 2024, 2026
Michael studies bacterial evolution and computational genomics, with a focus on antibiotic resistance, horizontal gene transfer, and the roles phages play in both.
Current instructors help students with sampling, plating, purification, microscopy, DNA work, troubleshooting, and poster preparation.
Bench
Instructor · BBS Program
Program years: 2025, 2026
Arushi is interested in how phages invent strategies to escape host defenses. She connects bacteriophage biology with broader questions in immune signaling and host-virus conflict.
Bench
Instructor and mentor · Hochschild Lab
Program years: 2025, 2026
Kristopher began at Pierce Community College before entering a science career. He studies how bacteria and phages deal with errors in protein production, and mentors students as they start doing experiments.
Bench
Instructor · HMS mentor community
Program years: 2026
Ophelia works with students during the wet-lab phase, helping with bench instruction, experiment troubleshooting, and poster feedback.
Bench
Instructor · Kranzusch Lab
Program years: 2026
Angela works with students on antiphage-defense concepts and wet-lab troubleshooting, connecting the bench experiments to questions about host-virus conflict.
Bench
Instructor · Baym Lab
Program years: 2026
Blox studies how competition between mobile genetic elements shapes microbial ecology and evolution. Their work blends theory and experiment across microbial ecology, phages, and mobile DNA.
Bench
Instructor · Abraham Lab
Program years: 2026
Jess works with students on virology methods, phage-discovery experiments, and troubleshooting at the bench.
Bench
Instructor · Choe Lab
Program years: 2026
Claire works with students during lab work and data interpretation, helping connect experimental results to clear scientific claims.
Bench
Instructor · Kranzusch Lab
Program years: 2025, 2026
Sam teaches host-virus and phage-defense concepts during lab and discussion sessions, with an emphasis on how bacteria and viruses adapt to one another.
Bench
Instructor · Kranzusch Lab
Program years: 2024, 2025, 2026
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.
Bioinformatics and poster instructors help students assemble genomes, compare sequences, build figures, and present results.
Data
Bioinformatics instructor · Baym Lab
Program years: 2025, 2026
Kepler works with students on genome assembly, BLAST comparisons, annotation, and the figures they use in final posters.
Data
Poster specialist · Bernhardt Lab
Program years: 2026
Tien works with students on final poster structure, figure design, and presentation readiness.
Former instructors, mentors, faculty partners, and program staff.
Past instructor and mentor · Bernhardt Lab
Program years: 2025
Anastacia is a graduate of Manatee Community College and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. She studies how bacteria digest nutrients and use that fuel to grow.
Past bioinformatics instructor · Eddy Lab
Program years: 2025
Liana studies mobile genetic elements, especially mobile structured RNAs and the phage genomes they inhabit. She helped students use bioinformatics to interpret new phage genomes.
Past instructor · Phage defense and bacterial systems
Program years: 2025
Molly studies the systems bacteria use to survive as single cells. She is interested in prophages, anti-phage defense systems, and how integrated viruses coexist with bacterial hosts.
Past instructor · Bernhardt Lab
Program years: 2025
Past instructor for bacterial cell-envelope biology and hands-on microbiology mentoring.
Past instructor · Hochschild Lab
Program years: 2025
Past instructor for experimental work, data interpretation, and scientific communication.
Past instructor · Bernhardt Lab alumna
Program years: 2022, 2024
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 · Kranzusch Lab
Program years: 2023, 2024
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
Program years: 2023, 2024
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.
Past instructor · Dove Lab
Program years: 2023, 2024
Brendan helped students with bench work, troubleshooting, and student mentoring during wet-lab phage discovery.
Past faculty partner · Department of Microbiology
Program years: 2024
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.
Past instructor · Fortune Lab
Program years: 2024
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
Program years: 2024
Kristen studies Klebsiella and has worked on how phages influence bacterial evolution. She is interested in how diverse phages shape bacterial communities.
Past instructor · Jost Lab
Program years: 2023
Baylee studies how phages affect microbial communities, including the complex communities in the gut. Her work connects phage defense molecules with human immune recognition.
Past instructor · Hochschild Lab
Program years: 2023
Kemardo began at Baltimore City Community College before studying biochemistry and microbiology. In the Hochschild lab, he studies bacterial prion formation using in vitro and genetic approaches.
Past instructor · Baym Lab
Program years: 2022
Siân studies how phages can rapidly alter bacterial biology and drive bacterial evolution. She has been a strong advocate for communicating the excitement of phage research.
Past instructor · Baym Lab
Program years: 2022
Natalia studies mobile genetic elements in bacteria using both wet-lab and bioinformatics approaches. She is especially interested in conflicts between conjugative plasmids and bacteriophages.
Past instructor · Bernhardt Lab
Program years: 2022
Kate studies how bacteria coordinate expansion of their multi-layered cell envelope during growth and division. She is interested in the diversity and complexity of microbial life.
Past instructor · Bernhardt and Rudner Labs
Program years: 2022
Thomas studies how basic cellular processes such as growth, division, and cell separation organize in bacteria. He began his scientific training in a community college setting and has been committed to research access for community college students.