The Bruns lab
May 2023: Rayshaun, Andrea, Sam H, Sam S, Dalia, Mackenzie, Emme, Eirena, Yanelyn
_JPG.jpg)
Emme Bruns, PI
Emme got her start in plant disease ecology at the University of California Santa Cruz. She did her Ph.D. with Dr. Georgiana May at the University of Minnesota, studying constraints to oat crown rust virulence evolution. She went on to a post-doc with Dr. Janis Antonovics at the University of Virginia, studying disease dynamics at species range limits in the Alps. She started as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Maryland in January 2020.
contact: ebruns@umd.edu
Sam Hulse, Postdoc
Sam H. is a quantitative evolutionary biologist with a background in sexual selection and applied mathematics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His research focuses on the evolutionary dynamics of resistance and infection in natural populations, with particular interest in resistance correlations, tradeoffs, and impacts of seasonal dyanmics.
Yanelyn Perez, Graduate student
Yanelyn is a PhD student in the BEES concentration of the BISI program. Her research interests center on pathogen competition and the evolution of host-specialization. For her PhD she is using the Dianthus-Microbotryum system in the western Italian Alps to investigate the ecological and evolutionary factors shaping pathogen host breadth. A native of LA, she graduated of the University of California-Santa Barbara, where she majored in biology and spent three years researching different aspects of the frog killing fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.
Michelle Launi, graduate student
Michelle is a PhD student in the BEES program. Her research is focused on the impacts of host population attributes, especially juvenile density and sex ratio, on disease dynamics. She is especially interested in the interactions between pollinator-transmitted pathogens and the evolution of separate sexes in flowering plants.
Yang Yang, graduate student
Yang is a PhD student in the BEES program. His research is focused on host-pathogen thermal physiology, where he as been investigating the drivers of "heat curing" in the Silene-Microbotryum system.
Eesha Gogieneni, Bio Honors student
Eesha is a junior conservation and diversity major. She is studying the effect of temperature on spore traits of Sliene latifolia originating from different environments.
Bhargav Srinivasan, research student
Bhargav is a sophomore biology and computer science double major. He is using a mathematical modeling approach to investigate optimal sporulation time for infected hosts two different transmission modes
Lily Stasko, Bio Honors student
Lily is a junior biology major. For her thesis she is studying the effect of anther-smut disease on the competitive ability of juvenile Silene latifolia plants
Andrea Shirdon, lab manager
Andrea has returned to the Bruns lab, and is currently our part-time lab manager while she finishes up her masters degree at Indiana University. Before her IU days she was a biology major at UMD where she completed an honors thesis with Dr. Alexa Bely. She then worked as lab manger for a year on the age-project.
Lab alumni
Sam Slowinski, (Postdoc 2020-24)
Sam is an evolutionary biologist and disease ecologist. In the Bruns lab, he worked on the evolution of age-specific susceptibly and pathogen adaptation to temperature. Now an assistant professor at the University of New England. http://samslowinski.weebly.com/
Ria Bansal, Honors student (2025)
Ria is a senior biology major in the honors program. For her thesis she is using is PCR-based methods to map the fine-scale cooccurrence of two closely related Microbotryum species parasitizing Dianthus.
Dalia Chen, Honors student (2024)
For her senior honor thesis Dalia investigated the effects of temperature on the growth and infectivity of the smut pathogen Microbotryum lychnidis-dioica. Read about her results in Ecology! She is currently a PhD student in the Mitchell Lab at UNC.
Eirena Li, Honors student (2023)
For her senior honors project Eirena used families of Silene latifolia and isolates of its smut pathogen Microbotryum lychnidis-dioica from its native range in Europe to investigate how variation in pathogen infectivity varies with host genotype and age.
Hailey Papagjika, research student (2023)
Hailey investigated the effect of host sex on the transmission of anther smut disease in Silene latifolia. She is currently working at Azenta.
Emma Yockman, research student (2023)
Emma investigated the effect of intra-specific density of seedlings on transmission dynamics of the anther-smut fungus Microbotryum lychnidis-dioica. She is currently an NSF graduate research fellow at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Rayshaun Pettit, honors research student (2023)
Rayshaun studied the effect of host species and age on the ability of the anther-smut fungus to recognize and conjugate on the leaf surface. He is currently and NSF graduate research fellow at Vanderbilt University.
