Principal Investigator
N. Luisa Hiller, Ph.D.
Eberly Family Career Development Professor
Associate Professor
Biological Sciences
Luisa Hiller is an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Department of Biological Sciences. Her area of focus is microbial pathogenesis. Her work combines comparative genomics, bioinformatics, and phylogenetics to develop hypotheses on gene function, and test these hypotheses in in vivo and in vitro models. This combined approach allows for the identification of genomic patterns and the correlation of these to microbial molecular behaviors and host responses. Her comparative genomic work has contributed to our understanding of pneumococcal strain diversity, as well as captured strain evolution during naturally occurring chronic infections. Her studies on the pandemic drug resistant pneumococcal lineages reveal how gene transfer may influence strain differentiation and virulence.
Education:
B.A. Pomona College.
Ph.D., Northwestern University Medical School. Advisor: Dr. Kasturi Haldar
Postdoc, Center for Genomic Sciences at Allegheny-Singer Research Institute. Advisor: Dr. Garth Ehrlich
Graduate Students
Karina Mueller Brown
Ph.D. Student
Shaw Camphire
Ph.D. Student
Bailey Smith
Ph.D. Student
Pratyush Madapuji Ravi
Ph.D. Student
Ashni Arun
Master's Student
Srujana Prasanna Neelavar
Master's Student
Ashita D Jawali
Master's Student
Barbara Ferreira
Visiting Graduate Student
Qixin (Amy) Zhou
Master's Student
Research Specialists
Rory Eutsey
Corine Jackman
Co-mentored Post-doc
Undergraduates
Matthew Hou
Past Lab Members
Sarah Werner
Ph.D. Student
Surya Aggarwal
Ph.D. Student
Postdoctoral Fellow
NYU with Dr. Jeff Weiser
Rolando Cuevas
Ph.D. Student
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Pittsburg with Dr. Cynthia St. Hilaire
Anagha Kadam
Ph.D. Student
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Cleveland Clinic
Senior Scientist at IDbyDNA Inc.
Philip Davidson
Ph.D. Student
Senior Scientist
Sanofi Pasteur
Irena Antic
Postdoctoral Fellow
Laboratory Operations Manager
Kalivir Immunotherapeutics
Jacob West-Roberts
M.S. in Computational Biology
Graduate Student
University of California, Berkeley
Sien Tam
M.S. in Computational Biology
Research Associate II
Genentech
Aya Nour
Graduate
Amanda Vallon
Undergraduate
Anne Liu
Undergraduate
Derek Wang
Undergraduate
Henry Liu
Undergraduate
Yiran Duan
Undergraduate
Brooke Dresden
Undergraduate
Graduate Student
University of Pittsburgh
Pedro Safi
Undergraduate
Tara Fedder
Undergraduate
Alex Muralles
Undergraduate
Software Engineer, Bioinformatics
BlueSphere Bio
Ashwin Panda
Undergraduate
Medical Student
UMass Medical School
Elnaz Ebrahimi
Visitor
Graduate Student
University of Florida
Emilio Rodrigues
Undergraduate
Graduate Student
Emory University
Aya Hassan Ali Abd Elaal
Undergraduate
Carnegie Mellon University - Qatar
Madeleine Goldfarb
Undergraduate
Matthew Kong
Undergraduate
Rose Pagano
Undergraduate
Gordon Pherribo
Undergraduate
Graduate Student Researcher
Department of Plant and Microbial Biology
University of California, Berkeley
Molly Bernsten
Undergraduate
Food Access Fellow
DC Greens
Xinyu Miao
M.S. in Computational Biology
Software Engineer at DAQRI
Carnegie Mellon University, M.S.
Joseph C. Kovatch
Undergraduate
University of Pittsburgh
Ummukulthum Umlai
Undergraduate
Carnegie Mellon University - Qatar
Vrushali Fangal
M.S. in Computational Biology
Carnegie Mellon University, M.S.