Past Events
MicroSocial Seminar Series
The MicroSocial Seminar Series aims to facilitate scientific exchange and community building across UMD’s microbiome research community. Monthly seminars feature UMD speakers, including students and faculty, who give short research presentations (either 2 x 12 minutes or 1 x 20 minute talks) followed by a social happy 1/2 hour over coffee and snacks. We welcome presentations about in-progress work or recent results, with the goal to provide an overview, receive feedback, promote opportunities for collaboration, or identify community interests and needs that the center may address. Open to all of UMD, the monthly seminar takes place on Tuesdays from 4–5 p.m.
To present at the MicroSocial Seminar Series, please contact Gabi Steinbach (gabis@umd.edu) to be added to the schedule.
| Attendees | Date | Time | Instructor | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All-hands + public | Tuesday, September 9, 2025 | 3:30-4:30p.m. | Fellow 1+2 | TBD |
| All-hands + public | Tuesday, October 7, 2025 | 3:30-4:30p.m. | Fellows 3+4 | TBD |
| All-hands + public | Tuesday, November 4, 2025 | 3:30-4:30p.m. | Fellows 5+6 | TBD |
| All-hands + public | Tuesday, December 2, 2025 | 3:30-4:30p.m. | Fellows 7+8 | TBD |
- March 4, 2025 (ESJ 2204)
- Darby Steinman, Ph.D. student, Bioengineering- “Vaginal Microbes Communicate with Reproductive Tissues via Production of Extracellular Vesicles”
- Taiwo Bankole, Ph.D. student, Nutrition and Food Science- “The Effect of Broccoli Glucoraphanin Supplementation on Ameliorating High-Fat Diet-Induced Obesity through the Gut Microbiome and Metabolome Interface”
- April 15, 2025 (ESJ 2204)
- Qingyue Zeng, Ph.D. student, Food Science- “Microbial Dynamic in Food Waste Compost”
- Dhiraj Chundru, Ph.D. student, Veterinary Medicine- “Optimizing Metagenomic Approaches for Enhanced Food Safety in Poultry Production Environment”
- May 13, 2025 (ESJ 2204)
- Yuzhu Mao, Ph.D. student, Environmental Engineering- "Flushed with Data: Tracking COVID-19 to Candida auris in Community Sewage"
- Aishwarya Pradeep Rao, Ph.D. student, Nutrition Food Science- "Seed to Salad: Detecting Pathogens and Profiling Microbiomes in Microgreens – A Quasimetagenomic Approach"
- October 15, 2024 (ESJ 1224)
- Raunak Dey, Ph.D. student, Physics- “Multimodal Inference of Virus-microbe Infection Networks and Microbial Interactions from Population Dynamics”
- Holly Childs, Ph.D. student, Nutrition & Food Science- “A Comparison of Daidzein-Metabolizing Phenotypes and its Relationship to Cardiovascular Disease Risk”
- November 12, 2024 (ESJ 1224)
- Sydney Overton, Ph.D. student, Electrical & Computer Engineering- “Electrochemical Detection of Gastrointestinal Serotonin Toward Understanding the Gut Brain Axis”
- Madhusudan Timilsina, Ph.D. student, Veterinary Medicine- “Exploration of the Upper Respiratory Tract Microbiome and Probiotic Interventions In Chickens”
- December 10, 2024 (BRB 1103)
- Robert Kirian, Ph.D. student, Bioengineering- “Biocalorimetry to Predict Bacterial Extracellular Vesicle (bEV) Production and Improve Biomanufacturing”
- Lora Cheng, Ph.D. student, Environmental Engineering- “New Horizons in Microbial Dynamics within Anaerobic Bioremediation Systems”
Invited Speaker Series
The Microbiome Invited Speaker Series features speakers from academia, industry, non-profit organizations, public communities, and federal agencies that promote the role of microbiome in a One Health context, ranging from sustainability, restoration, and public health. The series facilitates knowledge exchange between UMD and local experts in human and environmental microbiome research, with the long-term goal of establishing impact-driven collaborations in microbiome-focused initiatives.
| Attendees | Date | Time | Instructor | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All-hands + public | Tuesday, September 23, 2025 | 3:30-4:30p.m. | TBD | TBD |
| All-hands + public | Tuesday, October 21, 2025 | 3:30-4:30p.m. | TBD | TBD |
| All-hands + public | Tuesday, November 18, 2025 | 3:30-4:30p.m. | TBD | TBD |
- Tuesday, April 29, 2025 (ESJ 2204)
- Jotham Suez, Feinstone Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health presented "Personalized Nutrition and the Microbiome:
- February 18, 2025 (ESJ 2204)
- Suzanne E. Dorsey, Deputy Secretary at the Maryland Department of the Environment- Dorsey shares her experience of over 30 years working towards conservation as a scientist and within a governmental agency.
- November 26, 2024 (ESJ 1224)
- David J. Lipman, senior science advisor for bioinformatics and genomics at the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition presented "BLAST to the Future: A Story of Sequences in Biology"
Un-Seminar Series Fall 2023
The un-seminar series are weekly meetings that present preliminary research with the goal of spurring active conversations and creating new research collaborations.
Talks take place on Tuesdays from 12–1 p.m. at the DeWalt Seminar Room in Glenn Martin Hall (EGR-2164). Attendees are welcome to bring their own lunch.
- September 19, 2023
- Mihai Pop, Professor of Computer Science and Director of the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies- “The Role of Mobile Elements in the Journey of Pathogens From Farm to Fork”
- September 26, 2023
- Birthe Kjellerup, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering- “Metagenomic and Bioinformatic Analyses of Environmental/Experimental Samples Associated with Contamination of Halogenated Compounds”
- October 3, 2023
- Stephanie Yarwood, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Technology- “Educational Activities with the UMD Microbiome Center”
- October 10, 2023
- Jude Maul, Research Ecologist at USDA- TBA
- October 31, 2023
- Ryan Blaustein, Assistant Professor of Nutrition & Food Science- “Antimicrobial Resistance in Foodborne Pathogens and Emerging Food Systems”
- November 7, 2023
- Brantley Hall, Assistant Professor of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics- “Techniques for Microbiome Measurements”
- November 14, 2023
- Mihai Pop, Professor of Computer Science and Director of the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies- Upcoming Symposium on Microbiome Research