Microbiology: Faculty and Staff

A message from the Directors

Microbes are both the cause of and the solution to many of humanity’s grand challenges in human health, sustainable agriculture, protection of natural environments, cleaning up polluted environments, and engineered systems.

In the coming decades, microbiologists will be critical to understanding the microbes in these systems, controlling them, and putting them to work for us. The Microbiology Graduate Program educates students broadly in microbiology, so that you will be equipped to address any of these grand challenges. Whether you work on nutrient cycles, human disease, or microbial process engineering, you will learn the laboratory, analytical, and bioinformatic tools needed to ask and answer questions of global importance.

When you join the Microbiology Graduate Program (MGP) at UD, you join a vibrant community of microbiologists with faculty in 11+ departments across campus, including Biological Sciences, Marine Science and Policy, Earth Sciences, Plant and Soil Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. This breadth gives students access to an extensive range of equipment, collaborators, and expertise. Regardless of the home department and research topic, our goal is to characterize the microbes in different environments – from the human body to water to soil and sediment – and understand how they work, so that we can put them to work for us.

Our research takes advantage of our many excellent core facilities, including Bioimaging, DNA Sequencing, Bioinformatics, and Mass Spectrometry, in which staff help plan projects and either carry out analyses or train students on instruments to gain valuable skills. The MGP hosts the Microbial Symposium in the spring, to bring together microbiologists from across campus and disciplines to share ideas and our latest research. Our student-led EmPOWER (Empathic Peers Offering Wisdom, Encouragement, and Resources) program is also ready to support you. MGP EmPOWER’s activities include a graduate student mentoring network, where senior and first-year students are paired to create a support system for first-year students and provide mentoring opportunities for more senior students. EmPOWER hosts de-stressing events (such as movie nights, craft making, and hikes), as well as personal development workshops. Our community is close knit and welcoming, making it easy to develop friendships and collaborations.

Below, we give links to the faculty webpages so you can explore their exciting, transformative research. We encourage you to contact several of interest to you so that you may make connections to potential advisors. The faculty will find it most useful if you include some initial information about yourself and how your interests fit with their research.

Any questions? Please don’t hesitate to contact us using the “Contact the program” button below. We hope you will consider joining us!