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Featured Trainees

Featured Trainees are students, postdoctoral fellows, practicing physicians and faculty, and others who work under the tutelage of Levy CIMAR Core Faculty members and who stand out for their efforts in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. Trainees might be graduate students, antimicrobial stewards, educators, scientific researchers, medical doctors, veterinarians, pharmacists, or a combination of any of these and other professions. If you are a Levy CIMAR Core Faculty member and would like to nominate someone for “Featured Trainee” distinction, please email us any time at cimar@tufts.edu.

Spring 2024 Featured Trainees:

Our Spring 2024 Featured Trainee profile spotlights two first-year Biology PhD Students—Umaojo Ojogbane and Julia Hershelman—who are working with Levy CIMAR’s Benjamin Wolfe, PhD, to explore the ecology of antimicrobial resistance in fermented foods. As members of the Wolfe Lab antibiotic resistance team, their research explores how “classic” antibiotic resistance mechanisms operate in multispecies bacterial communities, where interactions between microbial species might change the outcomes of resistance. Dr. Wolfe is an Associate Professor of Biology at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences.

 

Umaojo Ojogbane

Umaojo is part of a Wolfe Lab team using metagenomics to identify the frequency of occurrence of beta-lactamase genes in cheese rinds and salamis. She is using hybrid genomic assemblies to determine the distribution and genetic structure of beta-lactamases. This work will determine if antimicrobial resistance can be horizontally transferred from these beneficial microbial communities in food systems to pathogens or commensals.

As she expands her research, Umaojo hopes to delve deeper into the mechanisms underlying antibiotic resistance in fermented foods, exploring potential mitigation strategies and their implications for food safety standards.

Born and raised in Nigeria, Umaojo moved to Massachusetts in August 2023 after earning her master’s degree in Applied Microbiology from the University of Agriculture, Makurdi. Her research prior to attending Tufts focused on renewable energy, particularly the production of biofuels from agricultural waste products. However, her growing interest in understanding the interplay between microbial communities in food ecosystems and their potential impact on human health and safety sparked a shift in her research focus.

When not in the lab, Umaojo enjoys taking walks and listening to good music. She dedicates her free time to volunteer work and actively advocates for educational reforms in Nigeria.

 

Julia Hershelman

Julia uses the cheese rind, a well-established and tractable microbial ecosystem, to study the ecology of antibiotic resistance. Specifically, she is interested in how susceptible bacteria respond differently to antibiotics in the presence of resistant species. So far, Julia and the Wolfe Lab have observed that some species of bacteria have varying responses to antibiotics in polyculture vs. monoculture. By understanding bacterial community responses to antibiotics, Julia hopes to share the importance of studying antibiotic resistance in a community context and the implications this research can have on environmental and clinical settings.

Prior to starting graduate school at Tufts, Julia earned a bachelor’s degree in Microbiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she was an undergraduate research assistant in the John Gibbons Food Science lab. There, she studied Listeria monocytogenes, and its cross-tolerance to a sanitizer and certain antibiotics.

Julia plans to continue exploring antibiotic resistance in a community context during her PhD studies. Due to the rising prevalence of antimicrobial resistance, Julia has developed a passion for spreading knowledge and awareness for preventing the evolution of resistance.

In her free time, Julia enjoys spending time with family and friends, running, and going to see live music.

Meet all of the Levy CIMAR's Featured Trainees: