My research vision is aimed at understanding the underlying mechanisms that control virus infection.
Viruses infect their respective hosts efficiently through a regulated process of recognizing highly specific
receptors and subsequently transferring genomic material across cell membrane barriers. My laboratory
uses model systems (bacteriophages and giant viruses) to uncover key protein:protein interactions and
molecular mechanisms critical for virus infection by studying receptor recognition and the viral molecular
machinery that controls genome translocation into cells. My laboratory has discovered that
bacteriophages that infect important enteric pathogens such as Shigella have an innate ability to utilize
multiple types of outer membrane protein (Omp) receptors to gain entry.

My education and training have prepared me for the proposed studies in a number of ways. My
graduate work at the University of Connecticut was conducted in Dr. Carol Teschke’s laboratory where I
learned rigorous protein purification methods, molecular biology and genetics, biophysical approaches
including in vitro macromolecular assembly techniques, and optical methods such as fluorescence and
circular dichroism. As a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Timothy S. Baker at the University of
California, San Diego, I trained in cryo-electron microscopy techniques including classic single particle
analysis as well as cryo-electron tomography. I developed expertise in both hands-on imaging and post
imaging data analysis and three-dimensional image reconstruction methods.

In my own laboratory I employ an integrated, interdisciplinary approach that combines these methods,
as well as several new methods that we have developed since establishing my independence. For
example, my laboratory has developed methods for phage isolation from environmental samples, whole
genome sequencing and alignments, as well as genetic approaches including CRISPR/Cas9-mediated
genome editing, and transposon mutagenesis studies.

I established my independent laboratory at Michigan State University in 2013 as a tenure-track
Assistant Professor. Since gaining independence, I have published manuscripts, secured NIH and NSF
funding, established a track record as a researcher, educator, and mentor and have been promoted to
Full Professor in 2022. I have established and am the Director of the RTSF cryo-EM facility on campus. I
have been honored to receive the AAAS Marion Milligan Mason Award for Women in the Chemical
Sciences, an American Society for Microbiology Young Investigator award, a Burroughs Wellcome Fund:
Investigators in the Pathogenicity of Disease award, have been appointed the JK Billman, Jr., MD
Endowed Research Professorship. Most recently I have served as the Prokaryotic Virology Councilor for
the American Society for Virology, and am currently an Editor for the Journal of Virology.