If you love science, have a passion for bacteria, and are excited to build with biology, you belong here. We are committed to a culture of inclusion and value our differences.
Principle Investigator
Bryan Davies, PhD
Bryan completed his BSc in Biochemistry, PhD in Molecular Biology/Microbiology, and postdoctoral fellowship in infectious diseases. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences. His research interests include antimicrobial discovery and development, bacteria-host interactions, and microbe engineering.
Research Scientist
Jennifer Parker, MSc
Jennifer completed her MSc in Environmental Health at the University of Washington. She has conducted research in diverse disciplines including environmental microbiology, plant pathology, and public health microbiology. Her current work is focused on discovering novel naturally-occurring antimicrobial peptides (microcins), elucidating their role in modulating the host microbiome, and engineering bacterial delivery systems to provide microcin-based therapeutics.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Justin Randall, PhD
Justin earned his PhD at the University of Michigan studying bacterial DNA repair. He joined the Davies lab to pursue more translation research and is now developing peptide therapeutics targeting Vibrio cholerae.
Graduate Students
Sun-Young Kim
Sun-Young received his BSc in Microbiology from Pusan National University in Pusan, South Korea. His interest in microbiology includes host-microbe interaction, synthetic biology, and biotechnology. Currently, he is working on the elucidation and application of the secretions system in Escherichia coli for heterologous peptide production. His future goals are improving the secretion system, and showing applications such as bacteria-based peptide delivery to hosts.
Kyra Groover
Kyra received her BSc in Biology from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Her research interests broadly include developing novel therapeutics targeting infectious diseases. In the Davies Lab, her focus will be centered around developing and implementing novel antimicrobials.
Angela O’Donnell
Co-advised with Howard Ochman. Angela graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She is broadly interested in discovering and engineering new antimicrobials. She is also interested in exploring how the study of antimicrobial evolution can inform and guide research. Co-advised with Howard Ochman.
Mady Telford
Mady Telford completed her undergraduate education at Brigham Young University where she majored in Microbiology and minored in Chemistry. Mady loves to learn about the many ways that microbes have evolved to survive in their environments. She will be exploring how to utilize naturally occurring bacterial secretion systems to secrete a variety of peptides.
Luiz Vieira
I am a Ph.D. student striving to address biological questions by harnessing the power of machine learning, data science, and bioinformatics tools. Co-advised with Claus Wilke.
Rita Ousterhout
Rita received her BS in Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology from University of California, Santa Cruz. In between her undergraduate degree and joining the Davies lab she worked in San Francisco as a Research Associate in the biotech industry. She is broadly interested in developing novel therapeutics targeting the immune system.
Research Associates
Richard Gu
Richard joined the Davies Lab as a sophomore during his undergraduate studies at The University of Texas at Austin, where he later received his BSA in Biology. His research interests include developing novel treatments against multidrug-resistant bacteria. He will be using his time as a research associate to study microcins, a class of peptide antimicrobials, and the effects of various peptides in mouse models.
Bethany Perez
Bethany completed her undergraduate at Louisiana Tech University in Biomedical Engineering. She is leading lab efforts to design approaches for in situ and intracellular delivery of proteins by bacteria.
Simon Sanchez-Paiva
Simon joined the Davies Lab as an undergraduate assistant while majoring in microbiology at The University of Texas at Austin. Simon is interested in studying pathogenic bacteria to develop new treatments for diseases. His research focuses on studying microcins and how they enter bacterial cells.
Undergraduate Assistants
Archie Don
Leon Tourarkissian
Quoc Nguyen
Haasan Malik
Wendi Deng
Samantha Fernandez