Alumni and Past Researchers
Dr. Elizabeth Mallott
Liz was a post-doc at the Amato lab. Her research focused on behavioral, physiological, developmental, and evolutionary changes related to faunivory in nonhuman and human primates.
She is broadly interested in the evolution of human microbiomes, and how plasticity in the microbiome in humans and other primates influences host metabolism, health, and fitness.
Dr. Melissa Manus
Melissa was a PhD student in the lab from 2018-2022. Her dissertation explored associations between infants’ social environments and the development of the skin and gut microbiomes. This work spanned populations living in Mexico, the Philippines, and the USA. Melissa is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas San Antonio. You can find out more about her current research here.
Sahana Kuthyar
Sahana managed the Amato lab from 2018-2020. She studied the howler monkey gut microbiome and developed field sampling methods for infant skin microbiome. Sahana is now a Ph.D. student at the Reese lab at UCSD. She is interested in how animal-associated microbial contributions are balanced between host energy use and immune function and how these trade-offs change under infection in domestic animals
Yan Zeng
Yan was a visiting Ph.D. student from 2017 through 2019. Yan received her Ph.D. from Preventative Veterinary Medicine from Sichuan Agricultural University in Chengdu, China in 2019. Yan’s research focuses on the dynamics between mutualistic gut microbial communities and their hosts. She is particularly interested in understanding the composition and diversity of the gastrointestinal tract in herbivorous animals, and my current research is focused on the gut microbiome of wildlife. Yan is now teaching and conducting research at Sichuan Agricultural University.
Dr. Sam Degregori
Sam is largely interested in animal gut microbiome diversity and how it varies across the animal kingdom. After completing his PhD at UCLA in 2022, Sam started an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship with Dr. Katherine Amato (Northwestern University) and Dr. Rob Knight (UCSD). His postdoc focused on constructing a large comparative dataset of published gut microbiome data to better understand how host factors shape the gut microbiome. He also worked on generating gut microbiome data on clades of hosts that have received little attention, such as reptiles and insects. Sam is currently a postdoc at UCSD.
Dr. Paula Maia
Paula’s research focuses on the political ecology of the gut microbiome. Her doctoral dissertation assessed how global economic forces, such as tourism and market pressures affect food insecurity and sovereignity at the community level and how these interactions affect gut microbiome and health.
Dr. Tabor Whitney
Tabor’s research interests include gut microbial communities, inflammation, health, and conservation. She plans to expand the use of the gut microbiome as a conservationist tool for monitoring the health of non-human primates by finding a gut microbiome unique to primates. She is currently a Nature Conservancy-Trienens Community Climate Resilience Postdoctoral Scholar, at the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern University.
More alumni and interns
- Imogene Asa, NU undergraduate student
- Peter Finnegan, NU undergraduate student
- Jeffrey Frankel, NU undergraduate student
- Honors thesis: “Going with your Gut: How a study in wild and captive nonhuman primates elucidates the evolution of the human gut microbiome.”
- Nicolette McManus, NU undergraduate student
- Honors Thesis: “Black and White Ruffed Lemur’s: a Study on Habitat Degradation and Human Development’s Impact on the Gastrointestinal Microbiota and Specie’s Health“
- Tara Mittelberg, NU undergraduate student
- Sean Obrochta, NU undergraduate
- Honors Thesis: “Microbiome Analysis of Resident and Migratory Urban Canada Geese”
- Ella Rubenstein, NU undergraduate
- Citlayi Villasenor, IBiS
Undergraduate students:
- Stephanie Torrello
- Esther Ubadigbo
- Rebecca Wu
- Jennifer Biak
- Katerina Claud
- Annie Chiu
- Lauren Calderon
- Doris Toledo
- Clarence Sanders
- Gabriel West
Interns:
- Amelia Baldwin, Oakton Community College
- Sung Joo Cho, Oakton Community College
- Jay Dugar, Oak Park HS, CA
- Amanda Gomez, National Summer Undergraduate Research Program (NSURP)
- Shayla Johnson, National Summer Undergraduate Research Program (NSURP)
- Lauren Kane, Feinberg MPH Program
- Alyssa Kobus, Evanston Township HS, IL.
- Brandy Parker, Post-Bacc
- Priyanka Pradhan, Feinberg Medical School