Hannah Guilani and Sabrina Yum-Chan, two UConn students from the MCB course “Microbe Hunters-Crowdsourcing Antibiotic Discovery” presented posters at the 4th Annual Small World Initiative (SWI) Symposium. The SWI Symposium was held in conjunction with the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Microbe 2017 meeting in New Orleans in early June. In addition to presenting their posters, Hannah and Sabrina had the opportunity to attend diverse talks and presentations at the Microbe meeting and their team “The UConn SWI Life” placed 2nd in the SWI Scavenger Hunt. The Microbe Hunters course, taught by Drs. Nichole Broderick and Trish Rossi, is part of the Small World Initiative, a novel introductory course that introduces students to hands-on research, while tackling the antibiotics crisis.
Also in attendance at ASM Microbe was recent MCB graduate, Kevin Burke, who presented a poster on his independent research with Dr. Broderick’s lab looking at the impacts of diet switching and the microbiome on Drosophila host physiology.
Dr. Broderick participated in the ASM Live Theater at Microbe 2017 as part of an interview for an upcoming book on Women in Microbiology with Drs. Jo Handelsman (Wisconsin Institute for Discovery), Courtney J. Robinson (Howard University), and Pat Schloss (UMichigan).