Become an IGB Fellow

The Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offers a number of fellowships for truly exceptional young scholars who have completed their PhD within the last several years, and are looking for a stimulating and supportive interdisciplinary environment to carry out independent and collaborative research in the field of genomic biology. IGB Fellows will typically spend two to three years conducting research in one of several research themes in the institute, and ideally this research will also overlap with two or more of these thematic areas. An annual salary of $54,000 will be provided, with a yearly stipend of $7,500 to be used in support of research.

Fellows applications are currently closed. View previous IGB Fellows here.

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IGB FELLOWS

Rebecca Batstone

A native of Canada’s Capital Ottawa, Rebecca Batstone received her BSc (Honours) and MSc from Memorial University in Newfoundland where she conducted research on a variety of marine systems. Under the supervision of Dr. Suzanne Dufour, Rebecca’s masters research focused on a group of chemosymbiotic clams, the thyasirids, which house sulphur-oxidizing bacteria in their gills, periodically digesting them for food. For her PhD research, supervised by Dr. Megan Frederickson of the University of Toronto Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rebecca switched to the legume-rhizobium system to study how symbiosis evolves and is maintained over evolutionary time.

Rebecca became an IGB fellow in September 2018. As an IGB fellow, she will team up with researchers working on diverse systems united by the Infection Genomics for One Health (IGOH) theme. She will pursue how beneficial symbiotic bacteria adapt to changing environmental conditions. More specifically, Rebecca will combine an experimental evolution approach with whole-genome resequencing to understand the underlying genetic mechanisms governing such adaptation, especially the role of horizontal gene transfer.
Steven J. Burgess

Steven J. Burgess is from the United Kingdom. He received a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Edinburgh (2007) and completed a PhD in molecular biology at Imperial College London, investigating metabolic engineering of green algae for biohydrogen production (2011). He then went on to undertake postdoctoral research into the evolution of gene expression patterns underpinning C4 photosynthesis in the lab of Prof. Julian Hibberd at the University of Cambridge (2011-2017) and briefly worked as an editorial community manager at eLife Sciences Publications (2017-2018) before moving to Illinois.

Steven's interests are in plant synthetic biology and genomics with a view to improving photosynthesis as part of combined scientific, social and political approaches for sustainable boosting of crop yields. As a result he joined Prof. Stephen Long's lab in 2018 to work on the Gate's Funded Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) Project an is an IGB fellow in the Genomic Ecology of Global Change (GEGC) theme.
Taylor Canady

Taylor Canady received his B.A. at University of New Mexico and conducted undergraduate (NIH-IMSD) research with David Whitten. In 2017, Taylor completed his Ph.D. in chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University under the guidance of Bruce Armitage and Marcel Bruchez. His dissertation research focused on developing nucleic acid probes/systems for high affinity and selective hybridization between the designed probe/systems and target molecules of interest. He became an IGB fellow in the Omics Nanotechnology for Cancer Precision Medicine (ONC-PM) research theme in 2017, where he will focus on developing technologies to detect and screen nucleic acid cancer biomarkers in blood. In particular, Taylor aims to develop an impactful “liquid biopsy” to detect nucleic acid cancer biomarkers early on in tumor progression. Furthermore, this technology should provide a “real-time” snapshot of the cancer type, stage, and evolutionary response to treatment.
Mohea Couturier

Mohea Couturier completed her Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry at the University of Versailles in 2008, and then went on to complete her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Evry Val d’Essonne, in collaboration with the University of Paris Sud 11, in 2013. The work encompassing her PhD thesis was focused on determining the respective functions of two reverse gyrases, peculiar DNA topoisomerases IA characterized by their unique DNA positive-supercoiling activity, present in the hyperthermophilic crenarchaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus P2.

Through her graduate career, she have developed an interest in the adaptation of microorganisms to their environment, especially in cellular responses involving change(s) into the structure of the DNA molecule. Thus, in 2014, she joined the Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner-Gren Institute, at the Stockholm University in Sweden, to undertake postdoctoral research focused on uncovering the pathways influencing the regulation of the cell cycle in another hyperthermophilic crenarchaeon, Sulfolobus acidocaldarius DSM639, with a focus on the involvement of DNA methylations.

Moheaa became an IGB fellow in the Biocomplexity (BCXT) Theme in September 2018 where she will investigate the involvement of DNA methylations in the spatial organization of the archaeal genome using multidisciplinary techniques ranging from in vivo experiments to biophysical single-molecule in vitro methods.
David Krist

David obtained a Chemistry PhD under the direction of Alexander Statsyuk at Northwestern University where he designed chemical crosslinkers and assay reagents to identify potential small molecule therapeutics targeting the human ubiquitin proteasome system. The wonder of ubiquitin signaling led David to the lab of Brenda Schulman at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and then Max Planck Biochemistry where he developed molecular tools to stabilize enzyme transition states in order to visualize them with cryo-electron microscopy. In September 2018, he joined the Mining Microbial Genomes (MMG) theme to study enzyme mechanistic aspects of host-pathogen interactions. David utilizes protein chemistry, structural biology, enzyme kinetics and bioinformatics to better understand how microbes populate human hosts.
Justin McGrath

Justin McGrath received his Ph. D. in Plant Biology from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 2009 under the direction Elizabeth Ainsworth. His dissertation research was focused on the effects of elevated carbon dioxide and ozone concentrations on leaf growth and canopy architecture in crop species. He was a post-doctoral scholar at Stanford University in the Center on Food Security and the Environment under the direction of David Lobell from 2009 to 2011. His research examined the effects of climate change on crop yield globally by developing statistical models using historical yield and climate data sets.

He became an IGB fellow in the Genomic Ecology of Global Change (GEGC) theme in October 2015, where he will provide guidance to develop a high-throughput mobile crop-phenotyping robot that will be applied to sorghum in genome wide association analysis. He will also use data collected from the robot to develop crop models to identify high-yielding genotypes. The robot system will greatly speed up the crop-breeding pipeline, providing both more energy and food to meet the quickly increasing demand caused by population growth.
Diana Ranoa

Diana received her M.Sc. in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from the University of the Philippines–Diliman. In 2006, she moved to the United States to pursue her Ph.D. in Microbiology at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign under the direction of Dr. Richard I. Tapping (Dept. of Microbiology). Her graduate studies focused on understanding the mechanisms of microbial sensing and the dynamics of interaction among members of the Toll-like receptor 2 subfamily of innate immune receptors. In 2014, she joined Dr. Ralph R. Weichselbaum’s lab at the University of Chicago Dept. of Radiation and Cellular Oncology to investigate the RNA- and DNA-mediated tumor cell intrinsic response to ionizing radiation, and to define the molecular mechanisms that promote tumor proliferation and metastasis.

Diana joined Dr. Paul Hergenrother’s lab as an ACPP Cancer Center Illinois/IGB Fellow in November 2019. She will be investigating the ability of the synthetic drug PAC-1, in combination with immune checkpoint therapy, to enhance anti-tumor responses and improve immunologic memory for tumor cell recognition in animal models.
Bin Zhao

Bin Zhao obtained his B.S. degree from Shandong University in 2008 and Ph.D. degree from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences under the direction of Professor Chunhai Fan in 2014. His Ph.D. research focused on developing novel DNA-based functional nanostructures and their applications in biosensing, bioimaging and nanomedicine. He has conducted postdoctoral research for electrochemical DNA biosensors, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-based analytical techniques, and DNA/RNA-based sensors for biosensing and cellular imaging in Germany and the United States (2014-2019).

In November 2019, he became an IGB fellow in the Omics Nanotechnology for Cancer Precision Medicine (ONC-PM) research theme under the supervision of Professor Brian T. Cunningham. He is currently working on the development of novel biosensors for digital assay of tumor biomarkers based on photonic crystal and nucleic acid nanotechnology.