The moment he joined Dr. Ken Bayles’ lab in 2005, Ethan Mann hit the ground running.
He quickly became an expert on the complexities of confocal microscopy, growing biofilms (think microbial colonies) and writing grants.
For the last two years he’s been funded by the American Heart Association to study Staphylococcus aureus commonly affecting heart valves.
It doesn’t surprise Dr. Bayles, a professor in the department of pathology and microbiology at UNMC, that Mann has done so well. The former INBRE scholar will graduate with a Ph.D. in May and is the third person from that program to do so.
“He came at the beginning of a paradigm shift for our lab that required new technology and Ethan just jumped in head first and mastered it, he was not intimidated at all,” Dr. Bayles said. “He’ll be missed.”
Mann helped develop new ways of thinking about S. aureus and the role of cell death when it forms a biofilm, tracking its development through confocal microscopy, Dr. Bayles said.
Mann recently accepted a position at The Ohio State University in the lab of Dan Wozniak, Ph.D., who works on Pseudomonas aeruginosa, another biofilm-forming pathogen and major infectious agent in patients with Cystic Fibrosis.
“Dr. Wozniak has a history of mentoring junior faculty and is successful at getting funding. I’m looking forward to working with him,” he said.
Mann credits Dr. Bayles and INBRE for helping him gain the confidence he needed to be a successful researcher. While INBRE gave him the skills to navigate a lab, Dr. Bayles gave him the freedom to pursue his own research interests and still keep focused.
“I’ve had no trouble getting through my graduate program with the experience I had as an undergraduate,” Mann said. “By the time I got to graduate school, I had done so many rotations, I was well prepared. In order to get a head start in graduate school you have to have that experience that INBRE provides.”