BIO5 Institute welcomes 2025 cohort of postdoctoral fellows
Eight exceptional postdoctoral researchers have been selected for the BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship, designed to advance interdisciplinary scholars in their career development.
Through financial support and professional development opportunities, the year-long fellowship through the BIO5 Institute helps talented University of Arizona postdoctoral researchers elevate their careers.
The seventh year of the BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship marked the most competitive to date, with the largest and most diverse group of applicants from across the University of Arizona campus in terms of research.
“From a record number of applications, we selected an outstanding cohort representing five colleges and eight various departments across the University of Arizona,” said Jennifer Barton, director of the BIO5 Institute, “These talented researchers embody the collaborative, interdisciplinary spirit of BIO5, and we're thrilled to support their work as they push the boundaries of discovery in bioscience.”
Recognizing the importance of investing in the success of postdoctoral researchers, BIO5 member Michael D.L. Johnson, associate professor in the Department of Immunobiology at the U of A College of Medicine – Tucson, founded the fellowship in 2019 with support from BIO5 leadership to promote cross-disciplinary projects that align with the BIO5 mission.
Including this year’s cohort, more than 55 BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellows have received $5,000 each to support their scientific projects and develop the skills necessary to become independent researchers in their fields. The award can be used for workshops, conference travel, or visiting peer labs to foster collaborations. Each fellow partners with a BIO5 member as their primary mentor and establishes a mentoring committee to provide guidance on grant applications, career advice, and job talk preparations.
This project is supported in part by the voter-approved Technology and Research Initiative Fund (TRIF) that helped launch BIO5 over 20 years ago. The U of A reinvests TRIF funding into projects that will spur research, technological innovation, and workforce development that benefit the people of Arizona.
Learn more about the interdisciplinary projects of the 2025 BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellows.
“In the future, I aspire to study the evolutionary dynamics of both animal and zoonotic tuberculosis, given that tuberculosis is a chronic disease with a prolonged latency period.” said Bugalia.
Evolutionary dynamics of asymptomatic stage of an infectious disease with mutation and cross immunity
BIO5 Member & Principal Mentor: Liliana Salvador, Department of Animal, Comparative & Biomedical Sciences, College of Agriculture, Life & Environmental Sciences
The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the need to better understand how diseases spread and evolve, particularly when they have an asymptomatic phase and partial immunity against new variants. Bridging this knowledge gap is crucial for improving disease control and predicting how pathogens behave in populations.
Sarita Bugalia plans to apply her expertise in epidemiology and mathematical modeling to develop evolutionary dynamics models of infectious diseases, aiming to make a significant impact on public health outcomes.
Bugalia will use the BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship to deepen her understanding of the early stages of infectiousness, including asymptomatic or latent phases. She plans to use the funds to visit a collaborator at Princeton University to learn evolutionary game theory techniques that examine how trade-offs, such as the balance between latency and transmission, shape the evolutionary outcomes of pathogens.
“The long-term goal is to introgress—or hybridize—the modern traits into wild relatives that possess abiotic stress tolerance, ultimately transforming them into future cultivars,” said Cervantes.
Looking back to look forward: Understanding the diversity of common bean wild relatives to improve modern crops
BIO5 Member & Principal Mentor: Alexander Bucksch, Department of Plant Sciences, College of Agriculture, Life & Environmental Sciences
A changing climate poses significant environmental challenges for many of the world’s key crops. Despite the advantages of crop domestication, this practice has created a breeding bottleneck, reducing genetic diversity and threatening global food security.
Using his expertise in molecular biology and computational biology, Alan Cervantes aims to address this threat. He plans to decipher wild ancestors' phenotypic and genetic diversity to leverage advances in plant breeding, introducing beneficial traits, such as high yield and pest resistance, from domesticated crops into their wild ancestors, which often show greater resilience to extreme climate conditions like heat and drought.
Cervantes will use the BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship to advance this idea, connecting genomics and phenomics data to study how the common bean acclimates to or adapts to harsh environments. He will use the funds to set up experiments and data analysis for his research and attend a synthetic biology conference to network and share his findings.
“My long-term goal is to become an independent nurse scientist with a robust research program that generates new interventions to improve addiction treatment, chronic pain management, and whole-person health,” said Coffee.
Bridging the gaps in opioid use disorder care: Identifying barriers and developing targeted interventions for nurse practitioners and advanced practice registered nurses
BIO5 Member & Principal Mentors: Judith Gordon, College of Nursing, and Todd Vanderah, College of Medicine – Tucson
Despite the widespread impact of the opioid crisis in the United States, access to treatment remains limited due to a shortage of specialists. Nurse practitioners (NPs) and advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) could help fill this gap, but many are not providing treatment due to scope-of-practice regulations, limited resources, stigma, and knowledge gaps.
As a nurse scientist with a clinical and research background in addiction, Zhanette Coffee aims to find a solution that enables NPs and APRNs to deliver compassionate, high-quality care for opioid use disorder.
The BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship will allow Coffee to conduct a cross-sectional survey to collect data from NPs and APRNs via an online platform. This data will then inform the development and pilot testing of targeted interventions designed to address the challenges these nurses face when providing opioid use disorder care.
“My overarching goal is to contribute to the understanding of global environmental processes, particularly focusing on nutrient cycles and their implications for ecosystem productivity and climate regulation,” said Filella.
Converting elemental to biochemical composition: Insight into phytoplankton cellular stoichiometry with varying phosphorus availability
BIO5 Member & Principal Mentor: Solange Duhamel, Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology, College of Science
To answer fundamental questions about our ecosystems, we need to understand the biogeochemistry and cycling of nutrients that serve as building blocks for life. One particularly important nutrient is phosphorus, which is essential for all living organisms but often scarce in surface seawater.
Alba Filella will address key questions about cellular elemental stoichiometry and the biochemical role of phosphorus by studying polyphosphates (polyP), a universal phosphorus biopolymer produced and degraded by all living organisms, including bacteria and phytoplankton. PolyP plays innumerable cellular roles, and its intracellular storage gives these organisms a competitive advantage when phosphorus is limited. Understanding the role of polyP is especially crucial as phosphorus deficiency increases across ecosystems
She will use the BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship to support travel to Spain and collaborate with an expert in the analysis of plankton cells using X-ray microscopy. Filella will use the fellowship funds to not only acquire new analytical skills but also generate data that can be applied to global ecosystem and biogeochemical modeling.
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“My long-term goal is to become a rigorous nurse-midwife scientist with a focus on interdisciplinary research that will advance perinatal health equity in the United States,” said George.
Advancing midwifery data collection and analysis in the United States
BIO5 Member & Principal Mentor: Elise Erickson, College of Nursing
Midwifery care in the United States is associated with reduced maternal morbidity, improved satisfaction with care, and enhanced health equity. However, national data on midwifery-led care is scarce.
Erin George aims to change that by becoming a leader in midwifery data science, using statistical tools not only to better understand midwifery-related health outcomes but also to expand existing models and data systems. George will build on her extensive background in midwifery practice and research, having worked as a Certified Nurse-Midwife for over a decade and conducting dissertation research on how people decide where to give birth, with a focus on freestanding birth centers.
George will use the BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship to complete advanced statistics training, enabling her to conduct sophisticated data analyses on the effects of midwifery care in improving maternal health outcomes and supporting the development of robust midwifery data collection systems. Based in Boston, MA, she also plans to use the funds to visit the University of Arizona for in-person mentoring sessions, present research findings, and facilitate data science workshops for doctoral students.
“I am an interdisciplinary sleep and circadian research scientist striving to promote health equity through novel interventions and science communication,” said Kennedy.
Caffeine, cognition, and sleep across the menstrual cycle
BIO5 Member & Principal Mentor: William D. "Scott" Killgore, Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine – Tucson
Kat Kennedy aims to use her interdisciplinary training in sleep and circadian physiology to better understand issues that affect underrepresented populations, including women and shift workers. Specifically, Kennedy wants to investigate how cognitive performance, mood, and sleep vary across the menstrual cycle in response to caffeine use.
Kennedy will use the BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct a pilot study which will track sleep, mood, and caffeine use across the menstrual cycle. This study will not only provide valuable insights for her lab’s ongoing research on caffeine and sleep deprivation in the military but also generate essential data for a larger grant proposal that will incorporate hormone biomarkers and neuroimaging to comprehensively evaluate the effects of caffeine on cognition and sleep across the menstrual cycle.
“We aim to understand the mechanisms of toxicity of environmental contaminants and how they impact susceptibility to certain infections, in collaboration with underserved communities, such as Tribal communities in Alaska and farmworker communities in Arizona and Mexico,” said Santos.
Do PFAS impact threespine stickleback sexual development?
BIO5 Member & Principal Mentor: Frank von Hippel, Department of Community, Environment & Policy, Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a widespread group of man-made chemicals used in many products, such as non-stick cookware and water-repellent clothing. These chemicals persist in the environment and accumulate in the human body, disrupting human development and hormone regulation.
With her background in biological and veterinary sciences, Maria Eugenia Sancho Santos will investigate whether exposure to environmentally relevant concentrations of PFAS disrupts early developmental stages in threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), a small fish that is a well-established model for studying endocrine disruption and developmental biology.
Santos will use the BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct a pilot project that will help determine methodology and provide preliminary data for larger grants focused on environmental pollution and its impact on both aquatic organisms and human health.
“I will take a holistic approach to studying plant-soil interactions and address ecological challenges using advanced analytical methods,” said Yang. “By applying this innovative approach to key ecological questions, I will position myself as a leader in the application of multiomics within ecology.”
Integrating microbial and metabolomic interactions in invasive plant species
BIO5 Member & Principal Mentor: Malak Tfaily, Department of Environment Science, College of Agriculture, Life & Environmental Sciences
The success of an invasive species in an ecosystem is influenced by a complex mix of external and internal factors, including molecular-level processes. Understanding these unseen plant-soil-microbe interactions is crucial for ecosystem management and restoration.
To better understand these interactions, Ben Yang aims to integrate his expertise in microbial ecology with metabolomics, the study of small molecules involved in chemical reactions inside cells, within plants and soil. Specifically, he will investigate the role of bacteria and fungi in shaping the metabolomic profiles of the invasive Lehmann Lovegrass and its co-occurring native counterpart, Arizona Cottontop, from the Santa Rita Experimental Range in southern Arizona.
Yang will use the BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship to extract DNA samples from the roots and rhizosphere—the narrow zone of soil directly influenced by the plant's roots—and use the Arizona Genetics Core for 16S sequencing. He also plans to present his preliminary findings at an ecological conference this summer.