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

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 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.
Joseph Cross

Joseph L. Cross, Ph.D. is originally from Carbondale, Illinois. He completed his B.S. in Sport Management from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2001), where he was also a member of the men’s basketball team. Joe went back to his hometown of Carbondale to obtain his M.S. in Sport Management from Southern Illinois University (2003). He recently completed his doctoral degree in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership (EPOL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2017). His interest includes leadership styles and program development among African American males at predominantly White institutions. Dr. Cross uses qualitative methods to explore his research interests. As a researcher Dr. Cross is motivated by his desire to give voice to the African American male, particularly surrounding issues of leadership styles of African American males who have developed programs for students in higher education.

Prior to joining IGB, Dr. Cross worked as an academic advisor in the College of Education. He also gained experience as a Research Specialist with CREA (Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment), where he collaborated with colleagues interested in the research of culturally responsive evaluation.
Marlies Hager

Marlies Hager received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2017 under the guidance of Prof. Samuel H. Gellman. Her dissertation focused on the utility of chemically modified peptides as agonists of G protein-coupled receptors, which play critical roles in recognizing and responding to extra-cellular signals. Her results indicated that certain modifications could yield peptide agonists that activate only a subset of signaling pathways available to the native peptide.

Marlies began postdoctoral research with Prof. David M. Kranz in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Illinois in 2017. Her postdoctoral work focused on characterizing the activity of different classes of antigen receptors in primary mouse T cells. Marlies joined the Anticancer Discovery from Pets to People (ACPP) Theme in April 2018, where she will work to understand the impact of novel chemotherapeutics on the immune system, and to develop therapeutic strategies that combine chemotherapy with various immunotherapies to treat pets with cancer.
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 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.
William Montgomery

Will Montgomery received his Ph. D. in Chemistry for the University of Texas in 2016 under the direction of Stephen Martin. His dissertation research was focused on the synthesis of novel tetracyclic indole containing compounds as potential cancer therapeutics. Will joined the Anticancer Discovery from Pets to People (ACPP) Theme in August 2016, where he will work to develop novel chemotherapeutics for the treatment of companion animals (dogs and cats) with cancer. The work will be heavily guided by genomics and comparative tumor oncology, and therapeutics that show promise in these advanced animal models will be further translated to human clinical trials.
Dipti Nayak

Dipti Nayak received her Ph.D. from the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University in November 2014 under the guidance of Professor Christopher J. Marx. Her dissertation focused on using experimental evolution to study metabolism and stress response in microorganisms that grow on reduced single-carbon compounds (methylotrophs). By growing bacteria, which reproduce rapidly, in flasks, it is possible to understand evolutionary processes as well as the physiology and genetics of the bacteria.

Nayak joined the Biocomplexity (BCXT) theme in December 2014. She will study the physiology and evolution of methanogenic archaea. Specifically, she is interested in syntrophy, the phenomenon where two species come together and each lives off the products of the other. The archaea can eat only a limited number of compounds so they form a "consortium" with bacteria that can eat complex carbon substrates and break them down into compounds that the archaea can eat. In return, the archaea draws down the concentration of the gas that becomes toxic to the bacteria.

For her research, Nayak will use genetic engineering to create archaea that can eat complex carbons and compare it to a synthetic consortium of a bacteria and archaea, thus using experimental evolution to understand the costs/benefits of each system by evolving them simultaneously in the same environment. More info at https://diptinayak.github.io/.
Priyadarshini Pantham

Priya Pantham received her PhD in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 2014 under the direction of Larry Chamley. Her dissertation utilized an integrated –omics approach - transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics - to identify molecular mechanisms of increased placental death in response to antiphospholipid antibodies, a risk factor for the obstetric syndrome preeclampsia. She was a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus under the direction of Thomas Jansson and Theresa Powell from 2014 to 2016. Her research was focused on investigating the placental mechanisms of developmental origins of adult diseases, using a baboon model of maternal undernutrition, and primary human placental trophoblast culture techniques.

She became an IGB fellow in the Computing Genomes for Reproductive Health (CGRH) theme in May 2016, where she will use high-throughput approaches to test hypotheses and identify genes involved in the pathophysiology of major obstetrical syndromes, such as preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM). Her research will also apply a comparative genomic approach to elucidate the evolution of the placenta, specifically in humans and nonhuman primates, in order to identify the placental causes of obstetrical disorders in an evolutionary context. This research will contribute to the theme’s long-term goal of creating predictive models that can be used to develop personalized medicine-based treatments and interventions to improve pregnancy outcomes in the short and long term.
Daniel Ryerson

Daniel Ryerson received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Integrative Physiology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2017 under the direction of Dr. Jongsook Kim Kemper. His dissertation research focused on understanding how bile acids and other fed state signals regulate metabolism in the liver. His work identified and characterized a new post-translational modification important for liver protection and maintaining bile acid homeostasis.

Daniel became an IGB fellow in June 2017 joining the outreach team where he will work to promote the cutting edge research being done at IGB. He will collaborate in managing the many distinct programs put on by IGB which strive to make science accessible to everyone including Pollen Power, Genome Day, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) Citizen Scientist Program and the annual IGB Art of Science exhibition.
Michael Saul

Michael Saul received his Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May of 2014 under the direction of Stephen Gammie. His dissertation research used neurobiological, genomic, and computational tools to elucidate molecular pathways contributing to the behavioral phenotype of a complex animal model for bipolar disorder.

Saul joined the Gene Networks in Neural & Developmental Plasticity (GNDP) theme as an IGB Fellow in the summer of 2014. He has two primary lines of research. For the first, he is working on a Simons Foundation project with Lisa Stubbs, Gene Robinson, Alison Bell, Saurabh Sinha, and Jian Ma to determine what happens to the genomics inside the brain during or shortly after certain social circumstances–specifically, social challenge and social opportunity for honeybees, mice, and stickleback fish.

His second project builds on his Ph.D. research, which involved working with a line of mice that was selectively bred for certain behavioral characteristics. Theme affiliate Justin Rhodes, who works at the Beckman Institute, has large datasets from work with mice that have been selectively bred for high voluntary wheel running behavior. These high-runner mice have been used to study exercise addiction, but they might also be used to gain insights on motivation. The project compares brain gene expression in the high-runner mice to that of control mice with the same breeding history and no selection.