Anne-Catrin Uhlemann, MD, PhD
Professor of Medicine
Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases
[email protected]
Thomas McConville, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center
The focus of Dr. McConville’s research has been on understanding the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and virulence in Gram-negative bacteria. Most recently we have been working to elucidate the determinants of polymyxin resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae utilizing a novel CRISPR- Cas9 system. Through this work we have been able to better characterize the role of various components of the polymyxin resistance cascade. We have shown that activation of specific enzymes not only leads to polymxin resistance, but also has wide-ranging phenotypic effects, including changes in bacterial virulence and fitness. In the future we hope to better elucidate the complex overlap between the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and bacterial virulence to help drive more rationale stewardship and treatment approaches.
Heekuk Park, PhD
Associate Research Scientist & Technical Director, Microbiome Core
Heekuk Park is an Associate Research Scientist specializing in Infectious Diseases at Columbia University Medical Center. He holds a PhD in Medical Microbiology from Chung-ang University in South Korea. Currently, Dr. Park is deeply involved in studying the shifts in the human microbiome, particularly focusing on variations observed in the cervical cancer microbiome of patients with and without HIV. His research also extends to the microbiome of various disease types and specimens. With a robust background in next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics, Dr. Park has exhibited expertise in studying the tissue, gut, and oral microbiome. He is also proficient in metagenomics and various microbiology wet-lab techniques.
Yael Nobel, MD, MS
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Dr. Nobel received her MD from the University of Pennsylvania and completed her clinical training in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She is now a Transplant Hepatology fellow at Columbia and Cornell. During this time, Dr. Nobel cultivated an interest in the role of the gut microbiome in hepatic inflammation in advanced liver disease and after liver transplant. In the Uhlemann lab, she has been studying the gut microbiome as a potential predictor of acute cellular rejection after liver transplant. She is also studying the gut microbiome as a marker of other liver diseases, including autoimmune liver diseases and hepatocellular carcinoma.
Genevieve Dobihal, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Genevieve Dobihal grew up in Massachusetts and did her undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh. She spent a few years as a tech in Dr. Christine Jacobs-Wagner’s lab at Yale University studying cell cycle regulation in Caulobacter crescentus. She then moved to Dr. David Rudner’s lab at Harvard Medical School for her PhD, where her thesis focused on the regulation of cell wall hydrolysis in Bacillus subtilis and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Now she is here in Dr. Uhlemann’s lab, where she hopes to apply her background in bacterial cell biology to understand how antibiotic resistance mechanisms affect bacterial physiology and vice versa. On the side, she likes to fatten up her lab mates with baked goods and watch futbol!
Adam Kopp, MD
Infectious Diseases Fellow
Adam is an infectious diseases fellow at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Prior to this, he received his MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed training in internal medicine at Columbia. He is interested in the prevention and management of infections associated with indwelling medical devices and prosthetic implants. In the Uhlemann lab, he is studying mechanisms of antimicrobial tolerance to surface biocides.
Maria Patricia Nunez
Graduate Student
Maria is from Rhode Island, and she received her BS in Microbiology from Wagner College in 2020. She is currently a PhD candidate in the department of Microbiology & Immunology, and her thesis project in the lab focuses on the evolution of polymyxin resistance in Serratia marcescens. Maria is a competitive athlete. If she could race the DNA in the gel, she would.
Lisa Yu
Graduate Student
Lisa is from Toronto and received her BA in Biology from Cornell University. She is now a PhD candidate in the Uhlemann lab studying how highly drug resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae colonizes patients. She is interested in how pathogen intrinsic factors and the gut microbiome influence colonization. In her free time she likes to read, cook, and practice martial arts.
Kylee Dresbach-Hill
Graduate Student
Kylee is originally from Northern California and graduated from the University of Arizona with a BS in Neuroscience & Cognitive Science. There she studied the eIF2-alpha pathway using western diet and sleep disruption rodent models. Shifting fields, she’s now a PhD student studying mechanisms of resistance and virulence in K. pneumoniae.
Amanda Simkhovich
Graduate Student
Amanda grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and received her BS in Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota in 2021. She then spent a couple years as a tech in Dr. Todd Allen’s lab at the Ragon Institute of MIT, MGH, and Harvard, where she used humanized mouse models and CAR-T immunotherapy to study HIV transmission and treatment. She is now a PhD student in the Uhlemann lab studying mechanisms of phage defense in Klebsiella pneumoniae. Outside of lab she loves to hike, play piano, and do crosswords in the park!!
Sofia Moscovitz, MS
Lab Manager/Senior Research Technician
Sofia received her BA in biology from Oberlin College in 2018. She continued on to her MS in biology with a specialization in microbiology from the University of Copenhagen, which she completed in 2020. After this, she worked as a Public Health Microbiologist for the county of San Fransisco, before returning to research at Columbia. Her current work in the lab involves studying the cervical microbiomes impact on preterm birth and the effects of arsenic exposure on Streptococcus vaccine efficacy. Outside of the lab, Sofia enjoys rock climbing, baking, and spending time in in Central Park with a book.
Dwayne Seeram
Research Technician
Dwayne received his BA in Biological Sciences from Hunter College (CUNY) in 2021. He is a part of the Microbiome and Pathogen Genomics Core, where he performs Next-Generation Sequencing to support research at Columbia University. He manages and performs bacterial whole-genome sequencing and downstream bioinformatic analysis for in-house and collaborative projects. His current project includes the prevalence, genotyping, and phylogenetics of Carbapenemase-Resistant Enterobacterales from Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Dwayne is strongly interested in NGS technologies and applications of bioinformatics in bacterial genomic analysis.
Abigail Montag
Research Technician
Abigail grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Northeastern University in 2024 with degrees in Biology and International Affairs and a minor in History. She’s now a technician excited by pretty much everything she’s introduced to in the lab! In particular, she’s studying the microbiomes of liver transplant patients. In her free time, you’ll find her wandering around NYC, daydreaming in museums, or crocheting in front of the tv. She’s not very good at baking, but she likes to try anyway!
Fiona McHale
Research Technician
Fiona is from Amherst, MA and graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a major in Biology and a minor in Health Studies. The majority of her work in the lab investigates the effect of prolonged use of prophylactic antibiotic treatments on the development of antimicrobial resistance. Through this work, she is particularly interested in the intersection of microbiology and public health, and how research can inform clinical practices. In her spare time, she enjoys exploring the city, hiking, and spending time outdoors.
Crystal Lim
Research Technician
Based in New York, Crystal has lived in San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Philadelphia. Before deciding to pursue a career investigating microbiology and infectious diseases, Crystal spent her earlier days researching colorectal cancer for her graduate studies. At CUIMC, Crystal is a part of an ongoing study investigating changes in the effects of prophylactic antibiotics on MSM in STI prevention.
Eugene Miller
Post-Baccalaureate Student
Eugene hails from the San Francisco Bay Area and is currently a post-baccalaureate premedical student at Columbia University. He earned his BA in Statistics from the University of Colorado in 2022. Before joining the lab, he was a software developer at Epic Systems, where he created tools to speed up the rollout of novel chemotherapy protocols and increase documentation of rare genetic disease. In the Uhlemann lab, he’s working to create computational tools for the secondary analysis of genetic sequencing data.