HAJDUK LAB BIOSKETCHES-

email: shajduk@bmb.uga.edu

phone: (706) 583-5542

Dr. Stephen L. Hajduk is Professor and Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Georgia. Dr. Hajduk received his B.S. from the University of Georgia (1976) and his Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow, UK (1980). He was a NATO and EMBO visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam and a Rockefeller Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. He joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in 1983 and was promoted to full-professor in 1991. He established the UAB Center for Community Outreach Development at UAB in 1998 and in 2003 moved to the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) as a Senior Scientist and founding Director of the Global Infectious Disease Program and Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Brown University. He moved his laboratory to the University of Georgia in 2006.  He has served on Scientific Review Boards for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIAID), the National Research Council (NRC), the Wellcome Trust (UK) and the Burroughs Wellcome Advisory Board for Infectious Diseases. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Parasitology International, Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology, PLoS Pathogens, and was editor for Experimental Parasitology.   Hajduk is a Burroughs Wellcome Scholar in Molecular Parasitology and a Fogarty International Scholar.  In addition, he has received the Hutner Prize from the Society of Protozoologist and the Odessa Woolfolk Award for community service from UAB. Research in the Hajduk lab is supported by the National Institutes of Health. See current CV at bottom of page.

email: ochsenreiter@bmb.uga.edu

phone: (706) 583-5480

web: www.bmb.uga.edu/ochsenreiter

Torsten Ochsenreiter is a Assistant Research Faculty in the Hajduk laboratory.  He received his PhD from the University of Technology in Darmstadt, Germany.  During his graduate studies in the laboratory of Christa Schleper (now at the University of Bergen, Norway) he analyzed microbial communities in different habitats, using environmental genomic and phylogenetic approaches.  His research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals.  Joining the Hajduk lab in the fall of 2003 Dr. Ochsenreiter switched gears and is now addressing the function of RNA editing using hight throughput sequencing and bioinformatics as well as biochemical and imaging techniques.  In these studies Dr. Ochsenreiter has established collaborations with the laboratories of Dr. Andrew McArthur (MBL) for bioinformatics and Dr. Stephen Aley (University of Texas, El Paso) for mass spectroscopy.  Dr. Ochsenreiter has presented his research at several meetings including the RNA Society meeting (2004, 2005, 2007) and the Molecular Parasitology meeting (2004, 2005).

email: jwidener@bmb.uga.edu

phone: 706-583-5481

Justin Widener received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from Hamilton College in 1999.  After graduating, he conducted research on horseshoe crab vision at the MBL with Dr. Robert Barlow and published in the Biological Bulletin.  Justin then worked as a research assistant, a clinical research associate, and as a market research analyst at Argose Inc., a biotechnology company developing a noninvasive glucose meter.  In 2002, Justin began his doctoral studies in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham with Stephen Hajduk and is exploring the biochemical mechanism by which haptoglobin-related protein induces cellular lysis of trypanosomes.  Justin received the Sigma Xi award for undergraduates at Hamilton College, on the “Genetic Arms Race” and parasite induced gigantism.  He was also selected as a Levitt Scholar for research and community outreach.  Mr. Widener received recognition for his poster presentation at the Molecular Parasitology Meeting in 2004.  As one of the first Brown/MBL graduate students, Justin participates in the Brown Pathobiology seminar series, the Molecular Microbiology and Immunology seminar series and research meetings, and has been a Josephine Bay Paul seminar series host.  He is currently active in improving the Brown/MBL program and is, for example, establishing videoconferencing of seminars and courses between Brown and the MBL.

email: mlerch@uga.edu

phone: 706-583-5481

Melissa Lerch is an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow investigating tRNA import into the mitochondria of Trypanosomes. During this research, four novel mitochondrial tRNAs have been identified. This discovery is quite exciting as it breaks the paradigm that none of tRNAs are encoded within the mitochondrial genome and opens a number of interesting questions about RNA processing and mitochondrial translation. For a more complete bio, http://www.bmb.uga.edu/journalclub/mlerch/home/.

David Seidman graduated in 2006 with a BS in Integrated Science and Technology from James Madison University where he collaborated with the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infection Diseases as well as the United States Veterans Administration to study tuberculosis as well as aiding in the goal of generating vaccines for Bacillus anthracis, Yersinia pestis, Ebola, and numerous other infectious agents. James Madison was probably the greatest president in the history of the United States of America; not only is he considered to be the Father of the Constitution as well as the Bill of Rights, James Madison petitioned congress to add a "Secretary of Beer" to his cabinet as a permanent position. Not only this, James Madison wanted to create a national brewery, yet congress rejected both of these proposals. Would we even talk about Samuel Adams if James Madison had of succeeded? David currently resides in the Hajduk laboratory and is working on determining tRNA trafficking elements in T.brucei that will hopefully lead to the identification of the translocon machinery involved in mitochondrial import of nuclear tRNA.

email: seidmadx@uga.edu

phone: 706-583-5481

Natalie Stephens received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College in 2003.  She graduated with honors in Biology for her undergraduate research, which has also been published.  After graduating, she worked as a research technician at the University of Columbia with Steven Greenberg.  In 2005, she began graduate studies at Brown University as a student in the joint Brown/MBL program in Woods Hole, MA.  Here, she became a member of the Hajduk lab before transferring to the University of Georgia where she continues to work with Stephen Hajduk.  Natalie studies the mechanism of resistance of human infectious African trypanosomes to Trypanosome Lytic Factor (TLF), a minor subclass of high density lipoprotein particles.  She is also exploring the trafficking pathways of TLF and the serum resistance associated (SRA) protein.

email: nastephe@uga.edu

phone: 706-583-5481

John Harrington earned his degree in biology at the University of South Alabama.  He began his research as an undergraduate at the Marine Biological Laboratory with Dr. Peter Armstrong.  Here he studied a cytolytic activity from a surface secretion of the horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus, that may play a role in defending the surface of the crab’s carapace from colonization by fouling organisms.  He continued his research in Dr. Armstrong’s laboratory as he pursued his PhD at the University of California, Davis.  John’s graduate work, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Matthias Leippe at the University of Kiel, Germany, elucidated the mechanism of membrane permeabilization by a family of proteins called the pentraxins, most notably C-reactive protein, a clinically utilized marker for infection and inflammation.  Currently John is investigating the interactions of human high density lipoproteins with target membranes, particularly the lysosomal membrane of trypanosomes susceptible to killing by human plasma.

Sedrik Anderson

Steven Sykes

Rudo Kieft

email: rkieft@bmb.uga.edu

phone: 706-583-5481