Dr. Melanie Higgins
Provide a brief synopsis of your education and research/career interests.
I completed my PhD at the University of Victoria in Canada, where I investigated host glycan metabolism in Streptococcus pneumoniae and studied their roles in pathogenesis. From there, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Adelaide in Australia, where I continued my research on pneumococcal pathogenesis and characterized potential vaccine targets. I then pursued a second postdoctoral position at the University of British Columbia in Canada, where I studied the structure-function relationships and mechanisms of bacterial enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of bioactive natural products. These experiences solidified my passion for combining microbiology, structural biology, and biochemistry to interrogate bacterial processes that can directly or indirectly influence human health. More specifically, I would like to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms by which commensal and pathogenic bacteria interact with host glycans in the gastrointestinal tract. I am also interested in studying how bacterial natural products are biologically synthesized, which will support the discovery of new molecules and biosynthetic enzymes.
What motivated you to pursue a career in science?
My motivation to pursue a career in science stems from my innate desire to learn about the fundamentals of life. Life takes on many forms, with each having its own unique cellular processes. My interests lie in understanding how microbes function.
Describe the path that led you to your current research/career area.
I have been interested in science from a young age and chose to pursue an undergraduate degree in biochemistry because I enjoyed my high school biology and chemistry classes. While I was an undergraduate, I joined a co-op program where I was involved in various research projects. In my fourth year, I completed a work-study program where I examined pneumococcal carbohydrate metabolism and pathogenesis. It was through these experiences that I developed a passion for investigating microbial processes using microbiology, biochemistry, and structural biology techniques.
What about your area of research (or career) excites you the most?
I’m most excited about uncovering and characterizing new enzyme pathways. I’m particularly interested in gaining a better understanding of how microbes metabolize host glycans in the gut and how they produce small molecules that have therapeutic potential.
What are the most challenging aspects of your research/career?
One aspect that can be challenging is the complexity of the gut microbiome. There are trillions of microorganisms that live inside the human body. Since there is a lot of cross talk and competition between these microbes, there can be potential complications when trying to determine the biological roles for specific pathways from a particular bacterial species.
What advice would you offer to undergraduate and graduate students?
My advice to students is to start thinking about your career goals early. Figure out what areas of science excite you by getting involved in various research labs or projects, talk to scientists from all sectors, and attend conferences and career fairs. Also, use your supervisor and other faculty members as a resource for career advice and networking.
What do you foresee as the most rewarding as well as challenging part of your new job at UA?
I think the most rewarding part of this new job will be training and mentoring students. I’m very excited to be able to watch students progress through their education and see how their experiences guide their career paths. Something that will be challenging at the start will be finding a good balance between teaching, research, and service.
Dr. Arial Shogren
Provide a brief synopsis of your education and research/career interests.
River signals tell stories as they move and modify the materials flowing across the landscape: of where water and what it carries has been, where it is going, and how it might impact downstream ecosystems. I am fundamentally intrigued with these stories, listening to them and decoding them using tools from ecology and hydrology.
In terms of academic training, I completed my honors undergraduate degree in biology at Vassar College in 2013. I then went right to graduate school to study stream ecology at The University of Notre Dame, and earned my Ph.D. in biological sciences in 2018. In my doctorate work, I assessed the impact of stream flow on the fate and transport of emergent materials from the mesocosm to the river scale. Mostly, I worked on constraining the fate and transport of suspended particles, like environmental DNA (eDNA)—a mixture of cells, mucus, and other tissues containing genetic materials that can be found in aquatic environments. After finishing grad school, I accepted a postdoctoral position at Michigan State University (MSU), where I was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Biology (NSF-PRFB). As a postdoc, my research focus telescoped from the reach to the watershed scale. My postdoc research has explored the fate of carbon and nutrients in Arctic watersheds associated with the Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Toolik Field Station. While the scale and place of my research unit changed substantially between grad school and postdoc, the core theme remains the same: understanding how environmental variation influences the fate of ecosystem materials flowing through river networks. As I transition into a faculty position here at UA, my research program will study the interactions between abiotic and biotic drivers, recognizing that the lateral movement of water and material from terrestrial to aquatic systems is a key indicator of ecosystem structure and function. While I’d like to continue to do work in the Arctic, my goal is to establish research sites here in Alabama.
What motivated you to pursue a career in science?
Like many ecologists, my initial interest in science came from an early love of being outside. I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, which is a city surrounded by lakes and streams, so I spent a lot of my early life around (and in) the freshwater ecosystems near my home. My interest in science as a career option came a bit later, though, while I was an undergraduate student at Vassar. During the summer between my junior and senior years, I accepted a research technician position at The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. My mentor from the Cary made it clear that freshwater research was a viable career option, which motivated me to go to grad school and pursue an academic career.
Describe the path that led you to your current research/career area.
While there’s always a bit of serendipity to anyone’s career path, both of my graduate and postdoc projects were very dynamic projects that provided critical experience working productively with interdisciplinary teams. My academic training is in ecology, but I truly developed as a scientist by working at the intersection of stream ecology, hydrology, and biogeochemistry. I have found that the node where these fields meet is a rich, productive space to ask and answer critical and interesting questions. It also facilitates a lot of creativity in how you approach a question, which is one of my favorite aspects of field research.
What about your area of research (or career) excites you the most?
The most exciting thing I learned during my postdoc at MSU is to “mind the gap”—to find out what we as scientists might be missing by ignoring relevant spatial scales, under-studying certain periods of time, or by only using a single perspective to study a problem. I think it’s important for scientists to constantly ask, “What are we missing?” Not only does asking this question help present new ways to fill the evident knowledge and data gaps and improve our understanding, but it’s also an exciting way of finding new research topics and questions! It’s especially fruitful for focusing research efforts in remote or understudied regions and finding new ways to solve problems.
What are the most challenging aspects of your research/career?
The challenge that stands out to me has been the pandemic, which has completely derailed plans for fieldwork, impacted progress on various projects, and obviously moved team communication online. I am not alone in how the pandemic has negatively impacted my research plans. However, despite these barriers, the last year has made me appreciate the resilience of students, postdocs, and faculty when we try and make the best of a bad situation.
What advice would you offer to undergraduate and graduate students?
My main advice is to work with the people you like to work with! It makes things a lot more fun, regardless of your career stage or trajectory.
What do you like most about your job at UA?
So far, the community here is my favorite aspect of being at UA. While I haven’t officially started at UA, I already live locally to Tuscaloosa, so I have had the opportunity to make connections to students and faculty on campus. I have really appreciated the welcoming and supportive atmosphere as I start to think about establishing my research program here.
What are the biggest challenges?
I’ll know more about this one in the fall! 🙂
Dr. Jon Sin
Provide a brief synopsis of your education and research/career interests.
I received my BS in General Biology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 2003. Following this, I completed my doctoral work in the Cell and Molecular Biology joint doctoral program between San Diego State University and UCSD. It was there that I worked with Dr. Ralph Feuer and began researching how the common human virus coxsackievirus hijacks cellular autophagy machinery to escape the cell in previously undescribed autophagosome-derived microvesicles. After finishing my PhD, I began my postdoctoral training at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center under Dr. Roberta Gottlieb. My primary focus during my postdoc and after transitioning to assistant professor at Cedars was to investigate how coxsackievirus manipulates mitochondrial activity to further viral replication and viral spread. With the knowledge we gathered from our studies we were able to identify a number of highly effective and safe antiviral drugs to combat viral infection both in cultured cells as well as in animal models. Through this work, I was also able to obtain several externally funded research grants, and I am very excited to carry out those research projects in my new home at The University of Alabama!
What motivated you to pursue a career in science?
I have always been fascinated by the cellular and molecular processes that allow our bodies to function the way they do, and I have learned through the years that we can learn so much from studying the factors that disrupt these processes. This is what led me to pursue a career in virology, studying how viruses hijack and disrupt host cell machinery and formulating novel therapeutic approaches to limit infections and treat diseases caused by the viruses.
Describe the path that led you to your current research/career area.
When I began laboratory research, I studied common environmental factors, such as herbicides, that would cause disease in humans. It was when I started my doctoral work that my mentor, Ralph Feuer, opened my eyes to the world of virology and I learned about how some viruses have evolved to wreak havoc in their host. This led me to focus on investigating the “molecular arms race” that occurs between host and pathogen. Learning more about these interactions has allowed my group to not only understand how viruses thrive in the cell but also how to disrupt these processes in order to stop the virus in its tracks and prevent cell/tissue damage.
What about your area of research (or career) excites you the most?
My work primarily focuses on coxsackievirus infections, which are very common in humans. This virus typically causes mild symptoms but can sometimes lead to severe inflammatory diseases, such as meningoencephalitis, pancreatitis, and myocarditis. These severe disease manifestations are more common in young children, who are more susceptible to fatal illness. To date, there are no effective vaccines for coxsackievirus nor are there effective treatments for the diseases that the virus causes. Our group has reported on a number of previously unknown methods by which coxsackievirus exploits the host cell, and with this knowledge, we have been able to test several highly effective strategies to treat coxsackievirus-associated diseases like pancreatitis and myocarditis.
What are the most challenging aspects of your research/career?
Perhaps the main challenge I face in my research is that from time to time, when the science leads to more unconventional hypotheses that go against the grain, I end up fixating on them. I feel like we learn so much more when we try to answer those “higher risk” questions. Problem is though that sometimes the rest of the research community will hold more skepticism at first, so it takes a lot more convincing to really drive the point home. That being said, it’s absolutely worth it in the end.
What advice would you offer to undergraduate and graduate students?
Never stop having fun with your science. The quickest way to burn out in research is to lose sight of what got you excited about it in the beginning. So your Western blots fail five times in a row, or you suddenly get opposite results in everything you’re doing. It happens. Just stop, take a breath, regroup with your lab, and refresh. You’ll be back on track in no time.
What do you foresee as the most rewarding as well as challenging part of your new job at UA?
It’s definitely lab mentorship. I love mentoring new scientists, and it’s an incredible feeling when I can help instill a passion for science in my mentees. I think the challenging aspect of this is that you have to give a lot of yourself to your trainees. Mentorship is about serving your mentees rather than the other way around. You need to be patient and willing to dedicate a lot of your own resources to them. My best mentors all did this for me, so I see it more as paying it forward.
Dr. Ben Titus
Provide a brief synopsis of your education and research/career interests.
I received my BSc in Ecology at a small liberal arts college in Westerville, Ohio (Otterbein College) and followed that up with a MSc in Marine Biology at Auburn University. I ended up back in Ohio for my PhD in the Dept. of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University. After OSU, I was a Gerstner Scholar & Lerner Gray Postdoctoral Fellow in the Dept. of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I spent last year as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Throughout my entire academic background, my research interests have revolved around understanding the evolution and ecology of tropical marine mutualisms. My research program pursues questions at all levels of biological organization but is primarily centered on the systematics of sea anemones and their symbionts. Many of the species I work on are poorly studied and so field sampling and molecular species delimitation analyses are important to account for the true species level diversity in the groups I work in. From there I can generate downstream hypotheses that are rooted in a well-resolved phylogenetic framework.
I am currently funded through NSF to pursue the systematics and species delimitation of the clownfish-hosting sea anemones, as well as pursue some questions regarding the origin of tropical sea anemone diversity more broadly. My other long-term research interests are focused on using full genome sequencing for the clownfish-hosting anemones to test some fundamental hypotheses regarding mutualism and genome evolution.
What motivated you to pursue a career in science?
I actually started undergrad as a business major, but a trip to the Caribbean before I enrolled reignited a long-held interest in the ocean. After suffering through an economics class, I found out there was a paleontologist in the Biology Dept. who studied fossilized coral reefs. I met with them at the end of my freshman year and decided to change my major to ecology. I was able to conduct research in Belize and the Dominican Republic, and that really sealed my desire to pursue science as a career.
Describe the path that led you to your current research/career area.
After undergrad, I knew I wanted to pursue a MSc in Marine Ecology, but I wanted nothing to do with molecular research. I was able to find a position in a field ecology lab with Dr. Nanette Chadwick at Auburn University working on tropical sea anemone mutualisms in the Caribbean and Red Sea. As I developed my thesis, the questions that I seemed the most interested in ended up requiring a molecular approach. I ended up taking a Molecular Ecology course with Dr. Scott Santos and really fell in love with it. From there I began to realize that no one was studying the evolution of tropical sea anemones. Ultimately, I was able to combine my field background and organismal familiarity with sea anemone symbioses with my new interests in molecular systematics and find a great PhD position with Dr. Meg Daly at OSU.
What about your area of research (or career) excites you the most?
I think it’s the variety. Mutualisms are complex, and to really understand how biodiversity evolves within mutualisms, it requires a deep understanding of their distributions, associations, ecology, diversity, and behaviors. I end up developing a lot of different types of projects, so while the core of my research is focused on systematics, I get to pursue pretty much any question that interests me. It makes things a lot of fun!
What are the most challenging aspects of your research/career?
I think it’s the variety…haha. For all the reasons listed above. It’s important to focus on the major questions and not get sidetracked with every potential project idea that materializes along the way.
What advice would you offer to undergraduate and graduate students?
This is a tough one. There are so many different paths to take, but broadly, for undergraduates I would really stress the importance of figuring out what kind of science you like to do and prioritize pursuing research opportunities in that field rather than prioritizing projects on an organismal group you might be interested in but in a field you aren’t excited about. If you can do both, great, but that’s not always possible.
For graduate students, the only universal advice I have is that you have to learn to like writing. It’s the only part of science that you are truly doing by yourself. Project development, data collection, and data analysis can all be done with another person sitting beside you start to finish, but the first draft of any grant or manuscript is pretty much done alone. If you are inherently motivated to write, a career in science gets a lot easier!
What do you foresee as the most rewarding as well as challenging part of your new job at UA?
I think it will be having graduate students and postdocs in the lab. I want to be able to provide the same opportunities I was afforded to the people that come work with me. That’s a lot of exciting and challenging responsibility to take on. I’ve had phenomenal mentorship and have built some wonderful relationships throughout my career, so I want to emulate that in my lab.