Erin is a dual PhD/VMD student at UPenn. Prior to coming to PennVet, Erin worked as a consultant/analyst doing extensive market research for pharmaceutical and medical technology products. She also completed her Master’s degree at Yale University in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, where she used computational methods to study bacterial cell growth. Erin has used a variety command-line and statistical tools for her work, including R, Matlab, Python, SQL, and Stata. Erin will be pursuing her PhD work at Penn jointly between the labs of Phil Scott and Elizabeth Grice.

Dan graduated from Boston University with a B.A. in Biology specializing in Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, and Genetics. After graduation, Dan was commissioned the U.S. Army as an Infantry Officer, serving in a Dismounted Reconnaissance Troop at Fort Drum, NY. Dan is the sequencing guru in the lab, and he spends most of his time planning and executing all aspects of our high-throughput sequencing experiments. As a result, he has developed a deep expertise in technology platforms ranging from 10x genomics, to Illumina, to lab automation equipment. In addition to his work in the lab, Dan is also pursuing a Master’s degree in Organizational Dynamics at Penn. In his free time, Dan enjoys spending time with his wife, Michelle, and two cats, Enzo and Luca. He’s also an avid fan of Formula 1 racing and working on his Land Rover.

Arnav is an undergraduate at UPenn (Class of ‘23) who came to us through the Galapagos Education and Research Alliance (GERA). In the Summers of 2022 and 2023 he joined others in our lab on a research trip to San Cristobol, Galapagos, where he was key in helping to develop portable sequencing methods to monitor natural water sources for potential pathogens. Arnav is currently using computational tools to analyze the data he generated. Arnav was selected for the presitgious Churchill Scholarship – one of only 16 students nationally – which will allow him to complete a 1yr masters program at Churchill College at Cambridge. After completing his masters, Arnav will begin an MD/PhD program at Harvard.

Stephanie joined the lab in June 2022, the summer after her first year as a veterinary student at PennVet, as an NIH-BI veterinary scholar. Steph was instrumental in starting our first microbiome study in little brown bats, where she combined metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data to understand factors that impact the outcome of P. destructans infection, the fungal pathogen responsible for White Nose Syndrome, a disease that has devastated the bat populations in the U.S. After completing this summer project and returning to her 2nd year in vet school, we were fortunate to be able to bring Steph back to the lab in the summer of 2023 as a Penn Global Research Institutes (PGRI) fellow. With this opportunity, Steph was able to spend the entire summer in the Galapagos working on our One-Health projects in collaboration with the Galapagos Education Research Alliance (GERA). Steph is now finishing her clinical rotations and is pursuing a career as a zoo animal veterinarian.

Jessica is a PennVet student (Class of ‘25) who joined the lab in the summers of 2022 and 2023 as an NIH-BI research fellow. She started and continues work on one of our largest microbiome experiments to date – a longitudinal study of the developing microbiome in piglets and their birthing environment.

Lisa joined the lab in early 2022 as part of our new Institute for Infectious and Zoonotic Diseases (IIZD). She comes to us from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she established and directed the CHOP Microbiome Center’s sequencing core. She got her PhD in the laboratory of Akiko Iwasaki at Yale University, and completed a postdoc in the Molecular Diagnostics Lab at Yale New Haven Hospital. Since joining the lab, Lisa has been instrumental in developing and leading some of our infectious disease field work both locally in PA, and internationally in the Galapagos.

Ekram joined the lab in early 2022 as an undergraduate Health and Societies major (premed) and worked on a project that uses metagenomics and longitudinal sampling to identify sources of early colonizers of the infant gut.

Sanya spent the summer of 2021 working in the lab on collaborative project that examined the microbiome in dogs with immune mediated disease.

Luke is a rising second year veterinary student at PennVet and is spending the summer of 2021 in the lab as an NIH/Boehringer Ingelheim (NIH-BI) Summer Research fellow. His project focuses on evaluating functional properties of bile acid-producing clostridia.

Leah completed her veterinary degree at Kansas State University and is currently an internal medicine resident at PennVet. Although Leah spends the majority of her time in the clinic, she worked on her residency research project which used portable QPCR technology (Biomeme, Inc.) to develop assays for measuring gut dysbiosis in client-owned dogs.