CURRENT LAB MEMBERS

  • Julian Damashek

    Microbial ecologist and biogeochemist, teaching about ecology, microbes, genomes, and aquatic ecosystems.

    Click here for my CV. Click here to email me. I put code on github. I’m also on bluesky.

  • Oliver Tennant

    Hamilton ‘24

    Archaea in Fayettevile Green Lake

  • Lil Gross

    Hamilton ‘25

    Fecal source tracking in the Mohawk River

  • Paige O'Hara

    Hamilton ‘25

    N isotopes using MALDI-TOF

  • Rasikh Shaukat

    Hamilton ‘25

  • Zach Schwartz

    Hamilton ‘26

    Refining techniques to use flow cytometry to assess lake bacterial populations

  • Reilan Garczynski

    Hamilton ‘26

    Ammonia-oxidizing archaea in global freshwater metagenomes

  • Albert Ji

    Hamilton ‘27

    Studying nitrogen fixation in associated with aquatic charophytes

November 2023. L-R: Julian, Trang Pham, Ben LaBranche, Zach Orluk. Not pictured: Julie Ying, Zach Schwartz

LAB ALUMNI

  • Trang Pham

    Hamilton ‘25

    N cycling in Oneida Lake (Fall 2023)

  • Zach Orluk

    Hamilton ‘25

    N cycling in Oneida Lake (Fall 2023)

  • Julie Ying

    Hamilton ‘25

    N cycling in Otsego Lake. Seen here pumping endless water from Green Lake!

  • Ben LaBranche

    Hamilton ‘25

    N cycling in Otsego Lake

  • Leah Griffin

    Utica ‘25

    Leah investigated antimicrobial resistance genes in estuaries, with a focus on analyzing shotgun metagenomic data. Her work was funded by the LSAMP program.

  • Lexi Rando

    Utica ‘25

    Lexi studied pyrophosphatase genes in global ocean metagenomes and metatranscriptomes, and presented results at the 2023 NEMPET symposium.

Tara Smith (Utica '23)

Collecting duckweed-infested water from the Mohawk River, ignoring the plants to look at the more interesting stuff (nitrogen).

Tara tested and refined methods for measuring nitrite and nitrate isotopes in aquatic samples using MALDI-TOF, in collaboration with Rick Geier at Colgate University. She is now a Research Associate at Curia Global.

Bella Raux (Utica '23)

Being not cold on Piseco Lake.

Bella studied dog-owner microbiomes by analyzing 16S amplicon data generated in the Belanger Lab at Colgate University. She rapidly and cheerfully mastered R, and definitely loves computers. Bella is now in vet school at Cornell.

Brie Lohmann (Utica ‘23)

Collecting mussels from Oneida Lake.

Brie developed field and lab techniques to study local aquatic microbial communities. She then used molecular techniques to combine fecal source tracking with N biogeochemistry throughout the Mohawk River watershed. Brie is currently a graduate student in the Master's of Education program at Utica.

Ally Marsh (Utica ‘23)

Tromping through a bog to sample pitcher plants.

Ally studied nitrogen in the Mohawk River and Oneida Lake, and had a knack for getting extremely good standard curves on nutrient assays.

Tyler LaFramboise (Utica ‘24)

Tyler applied his computer wizardry to bin and refine hundreds of metagenome-assembled genomes from creek water metagenomes, in collaboration with the Ottesen Lab at the University of Georgia.

Tanya Kuts (Utica ‘22)

Tanya studied urea and ammonium cycling in Oneida Lake

Kristina Kuts (Utica ‘24)

Kristina studied nitrite cycling in Oneida Lake.

Trinity Howell (Hampton University ‘22)

Trinity used machine learning software to identify sources of fecal contamination in estuaries using 16S data. She was funded by the National Summer Undergraduate Research Project (NSURP) 2021 program.

Nikki Pickett (Utica ‘21)

Thrilled to be measuring nutrients!

Nikki fell in love with debugging computer errors while taking a bioinformatics course, then completed a research project studying distribution of antibiotic resistance genes in San Francisco Bay using shotgun metagenomic data.

Matt Fedullo (Utica ‘20)

Matt designed a project studying antibiotic resistance genes in the Mohawk River near his hometown of Amsterdam, NY. He successfully never fell into the river. Matt is now in a physician’s assistant graduate program at Marrywood University.

Carrilynn Garrett (Utica ‘23)

Carrilynn started a field project studying nitrogen cycling in the Mohawk River that was immediately halted by COVID…

Arijana Dautovic (Utica ‘24)

Measuring some worms!

Arijana worked on a field project studying microbes in the Mohawk River, which was also immediately put on hiatus in spring 2020.


(Info about previous students will be back soon, I'm fighting with the online editor...)