December 2012
Congratulations to Elaine Waters, who attended her commencement in Dublin Ireland and received her PhD (University College Dublin).
Also congratulations to Carolyn, Jill, Austin, Kevin Lindgren, and others who took runner up in the UNMC fall volleyball leauge.
Welcome to Hannah McCarthy from Jim O’Gara’s lab in Dublin, Ireland. She has come for a couple of months to perform mouse flank biofilm model experiments with S. aureus atlE mutants.
October 2012
Katie, Austin, and Cortney presented posters and Carolyn gave an oral presentation entitled “Catheter colonization is dependent upon accumulation-associated protein (Aap), but not polysaccharide intercellular adhesion (PIA), in a rat catheter model of Staphylococcus epidermidis infection” at the International Conference on Gram Positive Pathogens, held in Omaha, NE.
Austin had his initial first author publication accepted in PLoS pathogens entitled “CcpA regulateds arginine biosynthesis in Staphylococcus aureus through repression of proline biosynthesis.”
Kendall published his fellowship work in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy entitled “KPC-4 is encoded within a truncated Tn4401 in an IncL/M plasmid pNE1280 isolated from Enterobacter cloacae and Serratia marcescens.”
September 2012
Welcome Dr. Elaine Waters from UCD Dublin as a new post-doctoral fellow. Dr. Waters trained under Professor Jim O’Gara at UCD where she studied the relationship between virulence, biofilm formation, and methicillin-resistance in Staphylococcus aureus. Elaine also recently won the prize for best oral presentation at the Dublin Academy of Pathogenomics and Infection (DAPI) Biology meeting in Dublin. She also won the prize for best oral presentation at the Society for General Microbiology meeting. The title of her talk was “Relationship between methicillin resistance, biofilm and virulence in Staphylococcus aureus.”
Carolyn presented a poster and Elaine gave an oral presentation at the International Symposium on Staphylococci and Staphylococcal Infections (ISSSI) in Lyon, France. The title of Elaine’s presentation was “Methicillin resistance alters the biofilm phenotype and attenuates virulence in S. aureus.”
August 2012
Congratulations to Kendall Bryant, who passed his ABMM board exams on his first attempt.
June 2012
Cortney, Carolyn, Austin and Katie all attended the Wind River Conference on Prokaryotic Biology at Mt Charleston, near Las Vegas NV. Both Carolyn and Austin gave oral presentations while Cortney and Katie gave poster presentations. All four students received a travel fellowship (Arnold Ravin-Muriel Rogers fellowship).
May 2012
Austin was awarded 2nd place in the annual Pathology and Microbiology “Best Oral Presentation” in the Graduate student research forum.
February 2012
Austin, Cortney, Katie, and Carolyn all gave oral presentations at the Midwest Student Biomedical Research Forum (MSBRF). Austin won 2nd place for best oral presentation overall; but won for best UNMC graduate student (cash award) and best Pathology and Microbiology graduate student (cash award) at the MSBRF conference.
August 2011
Austin was awarded a UNMC graduate student fellowship.
July 2011
Austin and Paul attended the Gordon Research Conference on Staphylococcal Diseases in Lucca, Italy. Austin was awarded a GRC travel grant, but was also awarded the Young Investigator Award, which is typically awarded to a post-doctoral fellow or junior faculty member; this is a very significant honor. Austin was chosen to speak after conference organizers saw his poster.
