Holly Bik receives NSF Career award
Holly Bik, assistant professor in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Science department of marine sciences with a joint appointment in UGA’s Institute of Bioinformatics, has received a grant from the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) to study the biodiversity, evolution, and ecology of free-living marine nematodes and their host-associated microbiomes.
The five-year, $1 million CAREER grants, among the most prestigious awarded by the NSF, support early-career faculty who exhibit promise as both researchers and teachers, and whose work has the potential to advance their field and their institution.
Bik’s expertise stands at the interface between biology and computer science, using biological questions and evolutionary hypotheses to drive the development and refinement of –Omic approaches focused on marine microbes.
Her NSF-supported project will represent the first large-scale investigation that collects molecular data across marine habitat gradients, including across salinity levels, water depths, and and gradients of environmental stressors such as pollution and oxygen availability. The study will provide a comparative dataset for the existing body of nematode taxonomic studies to advance knowledge of the structure and function of seafloor marine ecosystems.
“Nematode worms are populous in sediment habitats worldwide, from coastal estuaries to deep-sea methane seeps, though little is known regarding their interactions with sediment geochemistry and bacteria and archaeal members of the community,” Bik said. “We want to better understand how they interact with those microbial communities, as well as utilize new computational frameworks and data visualization tools to advancing the pace of environmental microbiome studies.”
“Dr. Bik is well-recognized by the scientific community for her development and refinement of high-throughput sequencing and novel computational tools to study the ecology and evolution of microbial taxa from diverse environments,” said Daniela Di Iorio, professor and head of the department of marine sciences. “Students have shown a keen interest in learning these advanced computational methods used to study complex biological ecosystems and I am confident that she will continue to provide excellent student research and educational experiences at UGA and beyond, and that this CAREER grant will aid Dr. Bik in achieving those goals.”
Bik’s research will use a novel approach that combines traditional light microcopy, environmental DNA sequencing, and single-worm genome sequencing in order to advance scientific knowledge of free-living nematodes and their ecological and evolutionary roles in marine habitats worldwide. The resulting datasets will produce an important baseline of global nematode biodiversity in shallow-water and deep-sea marine habitats, and illuminate “dark areas” in the Nematode Tree of Life – lineages which are currently poorly sampled. The project combines interdisciplinary research themes spanning marine nematode systematics, bioinformatics, and microbial ecology, with a strong integration of computational training and science communication for undergraduate and graduate students across all project aims.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to receive an NSF CAREER award that will advance my lab’s research merging classical nematode taxonomy, microbial ecology, and benthic marine science,” Bik said. “I’m especially excited to incorporate bioinformatics training into graduate and undergraduate curricula at UGA, which will help students develop strong data science skills that will be valuable for their future career paths.”
Image courtesy of Holly Bik.
By: Alan Flurry, UGA- Franklin News
UGA Research Awards | Congratulations to Dr. Bensasson!
Creative Research Medal
Douda Bensasson, associate professor in the Department of Plant Biology, has pioneered a new understanding that wild plant environments serve as reservoirs for a common fungal pathogen of humans. Her laboratory discovered that old oak trees harbor Candida albicans, which is responsible for potentially lethal yeast bloodstream infections in humans. Scientists thought that this species could only thrive in warm-blooded animals, but she showed that three genetic strains in oaks were more closely related to strains isolated from warm-blooded animals like humans than to other oak strains. The high genetic diversity found in oak strains implies that C. albicans has moved between humans and oaks multiple times and that plants could be the pathogen’s ancestral source. Her work in isolating, characterizing, genome sequencing and analyzing C. albicans has reshaped her field. She has inspired researchers worldwide to explore the evolution of this and potentially other human pathogens in wild plants.
Wayland Yeung Successfully Defends Dissertation
Wayland Yeung of Dr. Natarajan Kannan’s lab has successfully defended his dissertation titled, “Traditional representation learning approaches for protein sequence analysis” on Friday, April 15, 2022. Congratulations Dr. Yeung!
Yuan Feng Successfully Defends Dissertation
Yuan Feng of Dr. Shaying Zhao’s lab has successfully defended his dissertation, “Canine MHC-I Genotyping and Diversity Landscape” on Wednesday, April 13, 2022. Congratulations Dr. Feng!
Michael Skaro Successfully Defends Dissertation
Michael Skaro of Dr. Jonathan Arnold’s lab had successfully defended his dissertation, “Applications of machine learning in omics and computer vision” on Monday, April 11, 2022. Congratulations Dr. Skaro!
Dr. Jessica Kissinger elected AAAS Fellow!
Three UGA faculty elected as AAAS Fellows
(L to R) Patricia Yager, Jessica Kissinger, James E. Byers.
Three University of Georgia faculty have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In a tradition stretching back to 1874, these individuals are elected annually by the AAAS Council for their extraordinary achievements leading to the advancement of science. Fellows must have been AAAS members for at least four years.
“Researchers are elected Fellows of the AAAS by their peers in recognition of significant contributions to their field,” said Karen Burg, vice president for research. “As we expand our research and innovation ecosystem, it’s exciting to see our faculty continue to be honored for their superb scholarship. I congratulate all of them on this wonderful achievement.”
The 2021 class of AAAS Fellows includes 564 scientists, engineers and innovators spanning 24 scientific disciplines who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements. The new Fellows will be honored at the annual AAAS meeting in Philadelphia, Feb. 17-20. Along with the rest of their 2021 class, UGA’s three new Fellows will receive an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin whose colors represent science and engineering.
Including these three, 37 faculty at UGA are Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
UGA’s 2021 AAAS Fellows are:
James E. Byers: Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor and associate dean for research and operations in the Odum School of Ecology, Byers was selected for distinguished contributions to the field of ecology, particularly in invasion biology, parasite ecology, ecosystem engineering and range boundaries in marine environments, as well as excellence in teaching.
Jessica Kissinger: Distinguished Research Professor of genetics in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Kissinger was selected for distinguished contributions to the field of the evolution of infectious diseases, particularly for bioinformatics approaches.
Patricia Yager: Professor of marine science in the Franklin College, Yager was selected for outstanding work on climate-driven processes and their impact on marine ecosystems.
To view a list of all AAAS Fellows from UGA, visit the Office of Research website.
Dr. Ying Xu elected a 2022 IEEE Fellow
Bioinformatics Professor Ying Xu has been elected as a 2022 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow for contributions to knowledge discovery from biological data.
Xu Tan Successfully Defends Dissertation
Xu Tan of Dr. Andrew Paterson’s lab has successfully defended his dissertation, “Comprehensive analysis of resistance gene evolution, structural variation and recent genome rearrangement in plant genomes” on Wednesday, December 15, 2021. Congratulations Dr. Tan!
Dr. Liliana Salvador, Infectious Diseases & Institute of Bioinformatics, Receives Award from Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the U.S. Department of Agriculture
Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have awarded a total of $1.25 million to 10 multidisciplinary teams of early career scientists — including Liliana Salvador, Infectious Diseases & Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Georgia — in the first year of the Scialog: Mitigating Zoonotic Threats initiative. Each of the 25 individual awards is $50,000.
Awards will go to 20 early career researchers from a variety of institutions, including two U.S. Department of Agriculture agencies working together at the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility — the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the Agricultural Research Service. The funded projects, to launch new research in the detection and mitigation of emerging animal-borne infectious diseases, include seven new partnerships between USDA and academic scientists.