Jessica Ho 
Jessica was a  Sesync summer intern and worked on assessing vulnerability of US salamanders to chytrid pathogens.  ​    




Gabe Almario 
Gabe was a Sesync summer intern and worked on assessing vulnerability of US salamanders to Bsal.  He also completed a UMD Honors Project in Spring 2016 studying the interaction of chytrid fungi and bacteria cultured from salamanders. 





Chelsea Maguire

My name is Chelsea Maguire. I’m currently a senior studying Integrative Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This summer I conducted an REU project with Karen Lips at the University of Maryland. The goals of my project were to quantify the proportion of viable Bd zoospores after they had been shed off of infected frogs which required me to develop a fluorescent stain technique optimized for low concentrations of zoospores. The results of the experiment will hopefully be useful for chytrid transmission dynamic models, as such data has never been collected from living animals before. I was able to work with two highly susceptible, but gorgeous tropical frog species, Atelopus zeteki and Hylomantis lemur. This summer was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had, and has truly shaped me as a young scientist. With graduate school applications on the horizon, I am hoping to continue my work with wildlife disease, with a focus on chytrid research. I am hoping to apply my interests in molecular genetics and disease ecology as a new grad student at a respected research university next fall. For more information, please see the labs I am a part of at the University of Illinois here and here.

You can now read the paper from my research here.
Check out my lab video, here.




Lane Jackson
















Samuel Barnett
Sam was an Honor Student in the lab , majoring in microbiology and mathematics.  He was interested in the role of microbes in the environment and how they shape the world around us.  This interest includes the interactions and symbiosis of microbes with animals and humans as part of their microbiomes or as pathogens.  His research focused is on growth and phenotypic differences of the amphibian pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and how these traits relate to virulence. He is now a Graduate Student in Microbiology at Cornell University.






Alex Cunha

Thanks to our MHC NSF Grant, we were able to hire Alex as our Summer REU Scholar this summer.  Alex brought his laid back California attitude, his whip smart brains, and his creative energy to Team Panama for 3 months.  He worked with Grace to compare habitat use of post-decline amphibian communities to pre-decline communities.  He's working up the data now and we're excited to see him present his results at an upcoming meeting.

email: [email protected]

3rd year Undergraduate at Harvard University



Erin Thomas


Thanks to a State Wildlife Grant from the Illinois DNR, we were able to hire Erin Thomas (right) to assist Brooke (center) with field and lab work for several years.  Thanks to Erin and dozens of undergraduate volunteers, we swabbed thousands of frogs from across the state and also got to sample hundreds of museum specimens.  










Are you interested?

We are always looking for enthusiastic undergraduates who would like to get experience in research by working with us.  We often have a variety of activities you can join (data entry, animal husbandry, field work (spring thru fall), data analysis). If you are interested, please contact [email protected] and let me know how much time you would be available each week on average, your skill sets, and your interests.