2024

October

• Congratulations to Josh Soto Ocaña on his publication exploring the impact of metals on the early life microbiota published in mBio!!

• Congratulations to Alexa Semon and team on the publication of their manuscript describing the first mRNA vaccine for Clostridioides difficile in Science!!

July

• Welcome to the lab, Jibraan Fawad! Jibraan is a clinical fellow in gastroenterology at CHOP.

April

• Congratulations to Ashley Weiss for being awarded the NSF-GRFP. We are very proud of you!

• Congratulations to Alexa Semon and Amanda PeBenito for being awarded the Emerging Scholars in Collaborative Research at CHOP!

• Congratulations to Nile Bayard for committing to the University of Pennsylvania’s Immunology Graduate Group (IGG) to pursue his doctoral studies! We are very excited for you!

March

• Welcome to our new postdoctoral fellow Connor Tiffany to the laboratory!!

2023

December

• Best of luck to Alex as he starts a new adventure as a Senior Scientist in Vaccine and Immune Therapies at AstraZeneca! We will miss you.

November

• Welcome to our new postdoctoral fellow Rochelle Glover to the laboratory!!

• Congratulations to Dr. Joshua Soto Ocaña for a successful Ph.D. thesis defense!

September

• Welcome to our new postdoctoral fellow Haider Manzer to the laboratory!!

August

• Congratulations to Dr. Alex Smith for a successful Ph.D. thesis defense!

July

• Welcome to our new postdoctoral fellow Marisa Egan to the laboratory!!

June

• Congratulations to Joshua Soto Ocaña for publishing his thesis work in Science Advances looking at the relationship of Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), C. difficile, and mitochondrial functions during infection: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh5552

• The Zackular lab welcomes Ashley Weiss, MVP student, to the team!

May

• Congratulations Rinnie for passing your preliminary exam with flying colors. We are very proud of you!

2022

November

• Congratulations to Alex Smith and the Zackular Lab for the first paper from the lab published this month in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05438-x!!!

• Congratulation to Alex Smith for winning the Best Poster Award at the Immunology Graduate Group Retreat!

September

• Welcome to MVP rotation student Ashley Weiss! She’ll be studying C. difficile and enterococcal interactions!

July

• We are excited to welcome Amanda PeBenito, Penn GI Clinical fellow, to the team!

• Congratulations to Josh Soto Ocaña on winning best abstract award at the Anaerobe meeting!!

• Best of luck to our Research Technician Jessi as she starts her graduate school journey at the University of Chicago.

June

• The Zackular lab welcomes Rinnie Hewlett, MVP student, to the team!

• Zackular lab members Alex, Josh and Arwa present their research in progress at ASM Microbe in Washington, DC, USA.

• Best of luck to our Research Technician Pau as she starts her medical school journey at the University of Calfornia - Davis.

May

• MVP student Orlaith successfully passes her preliminary exam and is officially a PhD candidate in the Zackular Lab.

January

• MVP students Jamie Pan and Rinnie Hewlett join as rotation students investigating C. difficile bacteriophages and the inflammatory responses to C. difficile, respectively.

2021

November

• Graduate student Josh and undergraduate student Nile author a review for Current Opinions in Microbiology!

June

• Our lab family is growing!

  • Orlaith Keenan officially joins as a CAMB-MVP graduate student, investigating the role of the early life microbiome on C. difficile colonization of infants.

  • Welcome to the new and returning summer students Nile Bayard, Abbie Lustig, Julianna Smith and Ade Forrest.

April

• Congratulations to Lex for passing her prelim exams!

March

• Former rotation student Kevin Hernandez receives the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Go Kevin!

January

• Joe receives the “2020 Excellence in Mentoring Award” after being nominated by members of the lab.

• Taylor Yount from CAMB MVP begins her rotation in the lab investigating the role of cyclic di-GMP in mediating Enterococcus - C. difficile interactions.

2020

August

• We are so excited that IGG graduate student Alexa (Lex) Semon joined the lab and will be pursuing research on the intersection of early life colonization with C. difficile and immune development.

• We want to welcome Priyanka Chatterjee, a 1st year MVP rotation student to the lab. Priyanka is investigating how interspecies interactions may protect C. difficile from oxidative stress.

June-July

• We hosted two new undergraduate students (Sebastian Perez and Abbie Lustig) and welcomed two back (Nile Bayard and Jose Malaret) this summer in a virtual lab experience. These student researchers worked with our graduate and postdoctoral trainees to do bioinformatics analyses, literature reviews and more!

May

• Congratulations to Mauricio (Mau) Alvarez on (virtually) graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. Mauricio is now joining the lab as a Research Technician.

March

• Congratulations to both Alex Smith and Josh Soto Ocaña for receiving Honorable Mentions for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

February

• We are thrilled to announce that Zackular Lab technician, Orlaith Keenan, has been accepted into the Cell and Molecular Biology (CAMB) Graduate Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Congratulations, Orlaith! She will be pursuing her PhD in Microbiology, Virology, and Parasitology starting in the summer of 2020.

2019

July

• Congratulations to Dr. Arwa Abbas for being awarded the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for Academic Diversity!

• Congratulations to Alex Smith for receiving the University of Pennsylvania T32 Training Grant in Cell and Molecular Biology!!

June

• The Zackular lab welcomes two graduate students to the lab: Josh Soto-Ocana (CAMB-CB) and Alex Smith (CAMB-MVP)!

• The lab is excited to welcome Ying Yang, a CAMB-MVP student, for a summer rotation!

• We are also thrilled to have two undergraduate researchers join the lab for the summer. Jose Malaret, a Penn SUIP summer student, will be joint between the Zackular and Silverman labs at CHOP and focused on C. difficile infection. Nile Bayard, an undergraduate student from Haverford College, will be working on the gut microbiota.

April

• The lab is excited to announce that Dr. Arwa Abbas (postdoctoral research fellow) and Orlaith Keenan (Research Technician) will be joining our team in the Summer of 2019. Arwa did her doctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Frederic Bushman at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied the human viral microbiome in the lung. Orlaith is currently studying Microbiology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and is a Biological Sciences Intern the Apeel Sciences in Goleta, California.

January

• We are excited to welcome Mauricio, Josh, and Alex to the lab. Mauricio is an undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is studying Biology and Chemistry. Josh and Alex are rotation students in the CAMB graduate program.

2018

November