Organizers

Lauren Speare, PhD

lspeare3@gatech.edu

Dr. Speare is an Assistant Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her lab investigates the social lives of marine bacteria, how they interact with their environment, and the consequences of the ecosystems they inhabit. Current projects in her lab focus on bacterial symbionts of marine environments, with an emphasis on microbial predation by the marine BALO, Halobacteriovorax.

Macey Coppinger, PhD

mcoppinger3@gatech.edu

Dr. Coppinger is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Speare Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology studying host-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions through bacterial genetics and experimental evolution. She is currently exploring the genes and mechanisms involved in prey specificity and predation efficiency of marine predatory bacteria, aiming to develop molecular genetic tools for Halobacteriovorax.

Yewande Ajao, PhD

ajaoyewande@gmail.com

Dr. Yewande Ajao is a microbial ecologist whose research focuses on the phenotypic diversity and ecological roles of predatory bacteria, particularly Bdellovibrio. Her work has contributed to the identification and characterization of two novel Bdellovibrio species, advancing understanding of their diversity and prey interactions. She has expertise in microbial isolation, phenotypic characterization, and genome analysis. Dr. Ajao previously served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the United States Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) in Athens, Georgia.