2025 North Carolina Microbiome Symposium

Presenter Information
 

Julia Oh, Ph.D. | Session 1 –The human microbiome: from metagenomes to therapeutics

Julia Oh received her B.A. from Harvard University, her Ph.D. in genetics from Stanford University, and postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health. A professor in the Department of Dermatology at Duke University, Dr. Oh’s research combines high-resolution computational reconstructions of the host-microbiome interactome with microbial engineering to devise innovative approaches to create new therapeutic interventions and investigate the underlying ecology of skin microbial communities.
 

Ben Callahan, Ph.D. | Session 1 – Feline bile and low biomass microbiome measurements

The advent of high-throughput biological assays, and the “big data” they produce, has changed biological inquiry. But data in the absence of understanding is just noise. We are improving the characterization of microbial communities by modeling and correcting errors and artefacts in our measurements. We are developing new biomarkers of disease by carefully combining clinical outcomes with measurements of the human microbiome. We are connecting theory and experiment in the investigation of the ecology of microbial communities.
 

Luther Bartelt, M.D. | Session 1 – Diet mediates protean pathologies: pathogen-microbiota interactions in the malnourished gut

Dr. Bartelt is a physician-scientist with expertise in gut pathogen-host interactions, his research interests focus on host-microbiota-pathogen interactions at mucosal surfaces with a specific emphasis on malnourished hosts. Using novel applications of gnotobiotic techniques, his laboratory has identified new mechanistic pathways underlying diet and microbiota-dependent susceptibility, disease severity, and immune responses to chronic intestinal infections that contribute to childhood intestinal dysfunction and malnutrition. Using the intestinal protozoan, Giardia lamblia, as a prototypic chronic infection in undernourished hosts, recent work is identifying how inadequate nutrition reverses the role of microbiota from protecting against pathogen colonization to contributing to disease manifestations.
 

Bina Tejura, M.D. | Session 1 – Safety, efficacy pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic results from a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled cohort 2 of a phase 1b study of an investigational live biotherapeutic, SER-155, in adults undergoing allo-HCT

Dr. Tejura received her undergraduate degrees in pharmacology and medicine from the University of Wales, Cardiff. Having completed an internal medicine residency at Albert Einstein in Philadelphia she decided to further my research interest by joining a contract research organization in the UK gradually taking on more senior positions. She moved to the USA to pursue her interests in the design and execution of clinical trials particularly in oncology and orphan diseases. Dr. Tejura joined Seres Therapeutics in 2021 to understand the role of the microbiome in oncology, particularly in the stem cell transplant arena.
 

Angela Harris, Ph.D. | Session 2 – Microbiomes and the transmission of infectious diseases in low-income country settings 

Angela Harris is an Associate Professor in the Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering Department and member of the Global WaSH Research Cluster at North Carolina State University. Harris’s research broadly focuses on the environmental transmission of infectious diseases and developing and evaluating water, sanitation, and hygiene-related (WASH) strategies to protect human health. Harris also works to improve data collection and analysis strategies related to WASH and microbes in natural and built environments. She also conducts research related to infrastructure resilience to climate change and investigates how climate impacts microbial communities and environmentally-mediated transmission of disease. Harris conducts laboratory and field investigations, with research sites in Tanzania, Kenya, Bangladesh, Uganda, Indonesia, and the USA.
 

Sheng-Yang He, Ph.D. | Session 2 – Understanding plant-microbiota interactions in the phyllosphere

Sheng-Yang He is Benjamin E. Powell Distinguished Professor of Biology at Duke University and an Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His lab is interested in elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying plant-microbe interactions. Recent research in his lab begins to shed light on how climate conditions influence infectious diseases and how plants regulate microbiota to prevent dysbiosis. Dr. He received his bachelor’s degree from Zhejiang University, China, and a PhD degree from Cornell University, USA. He is a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
 

Jeseth Delgado Vela, Ph.D. | Session 2 – Microbial ecology, cell-cell signaling, and implications for biofilm treatment

Dr. Jeseth Delgado Vela integrates molecular tools and modeling to understand how microbial community interactions and dynamics affect engineered water treatment systems. She is interested in studying how microbes interact in wastewater treatment systems and harness beneficial interactions. She is also interested in combating harmful microbes in both natural aquatic systems and in the built environment. Her research group applies bench-scale experiments, surveys of environmental systems, molecular methods, and mathematical modeling to advance understanding of the microbiome in the urban water cycle. Dr. Delgado Vela earned a Ph.D. and M.S. in Environmental Engineering and M.S. at the University of Michigan, and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. She was a recipient of the Ford Foundation Dissertation Award, was named an Early Career Research Fellow by the Gulf Research Program and was awarded an NSF CAREER Award.
 

Russ Dor, Ph.D. | Session 2 – Molecular mechanisms of plant microbiome assembly: from bacterial genes to host specificity

Russ Dor is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Jeff Dangl at the University of North Carolina, where he studies plant-microbe interactions using genomics, experimental and computational approaches. His research focuses on understanding how the plant microbiome assembles, how microbial communities interact with both hosts and pathogens, and how these interactions shape disease outcomes. With a background spanning plant science, immunology, and microbial genomics, Dor is especially interested in uncovering microbial traits and host mechanisms that govern colonization, specificity, and functional dynamics within the plant microbiome.
 

Keynote Information
 

Ami S. Bhatt, M.D., Ph.D. | Keynote Speaker – From precise microbiome genomics to precision medicine 

Ami Bhatt, M.D., Ph.D., is a Professor at Stanford University in the Departments of Medicine (Hematology; Blood & Marrow Transplantation) and Genetics and is a physician-scientist with a strong interest in microbial genomics and metagenomics. Her laboratory develops and applies experimental and computational tools to study strain-level dynamics of the human microbiome, understand how microbial genomes change over time, and predict the functional output of microbiomes. Having discovered thousands of novel microbial microprotein families, her lab is working to decipher their roles in microbe-microbe and microbe-host communication, and to leverage this understanding to improve health and treat diseases. She has received multiple awards including the Chen Award of Excellence from HUGO and the American Society of Microbiology Microbiome Data Prize. She has disseminated her research globally, delivering more than 160 invited presentations. Dr. Bhatt also leads efforts to improve equity in research and medicine. She carries out research with the H3Africa Genomics Consortium, volunteers for the nonprofit she co-founded in 2012, Global Oncology, and serves as the Director for Global Oncology for Stanford’s Center for Innovation in Global Health. She continues to practice clinical medicine, caring for patients with hematological disorders in the hospital setting.