The Department of Bacteriology Distinguished Lectures in Microbiology are supported in part by the J.B. Wilson Fund, the Perry Wilson Fund, the Dennis and Alicemay Watson Lectureship Fund, and the E.B. Fred Memorial Fund. The Department of Bacteriology values and prioritizes increasing diversity, of both visible and invisible forms, in our invited speakers for the Distinguished Lectures in Bacteriology seminar series and departmental symposia.
Past Seminars
Thursday, January 22, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Benjamin Good | Stanford
Host: Charlie Mo
Title: Evolution and strain transmission in the human gut microbiome
Thursday, January 29, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Ankur Dalia | Indiana University
Host: Mark Mandel
Title: Regulation and mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer by natural transformation
Thursday, February 5, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Vivek Mutalik | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Host: Karthik Anantharaman
Title: Phage Foundry, a systematic multi-scale phage characterization capability to combat bacterial pathogens
Thursday, February 12, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: David Rudner | Harvard University
Host: Tu-Anh Huynh
Title: Cyclic-di-AMP modulates cytoplasmic turgor pressure to protect cells from lysis
Thursday, February 19, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Jizhong (Joe) Zhou | University of Oklahoma
Host: Jade Wang
Title: Microbes and Climate Warming: Impacts, Feedbacks, and Modeling
Thursday, February 26, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Dan Kearns | Indiana University
Host: Briana Burton
Title: Swarming motility and the control of flagellar number in Bacillus subtilis
Thursday, March 5, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Alexandra Worden | University of Chicago, Marine Biological Laboratory
Host: Katrina Forest
Title: Going Where The Wild Things Are: Ocean microbes, their interactions & ecosystem consequences
Thursday, March 12, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Clay Fuqua | Indiana University
Host: David Hershey
Title: Control and production of a pin-point bacterial adhesive by the model pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens
Thursday, March 19, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Andrew Gulick | SUNY Buffalo
Host: Michael Thomas
Title: Using Nonribosomal Peptide Synthetases to Discover and Produce New Bioactive Molecules Inspired by Natural Products
Thursday, March 26, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Cameron Thrash | University of Southern California
Host: Trina McMahon
Title: Investigating fundamental growth rate restrictions in the dominant and cosmopolitan SAR11 bacterioplankton
Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Junyoung (Jun) Park | University of California, Los Angeles
Host: Daniel Amador-Noguez
Title: From Metabolomics and Fluxomics to Metabolic Engineering
Thursday, April 16, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Michael Gray | University of Alabama at Birmingham
Host: Briana Burton
Title: Inorganic polyphosphate, (p)ppGpp, and a journey through bacterial physiology
Thursday, April 23, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Speaker: Romy Chakraborty | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Host: Erica Majumder
Title: Fueling Microbial Life in the Oligotrophic Subsurface: Dissolved Carbon and Necromass Transformations
Past seminars can be viewed on Kaltura (netid login only)