MICROBIOLOGY GRADUATE PROGRAM STUDENT HIGHLIGHT

Laurie Lyon, PhD Candidate, Horswill and Doran Labs 

Laurie Lyon is a 5th year doctoral candidate, co-mentored by Drs. Alex Horswill and Kelly Doran. Laurie is researching how the opportunistic pathogen Staphylococcus aureus colonizes the reproductive tract. Over the last few years, she has studied how one class of adhesins help S. aureus to colonize the vaginal epithelium. Laurie has developed and is following up on hits from a transposon insertion sequencing (TnSeq) screen in the mouse model of S. aureus vaginal colonization. The Horswill and Doran labs are generally focused on understanding how bacteria interact with each other and their human hosts to colonize and cause disease. 

For the past year, Laurie has served as the vice president of Project Bridge Colorado, a science communication organization on the Anschutz campus. Project Bridge hosts SciComm events at local breweries, work with the Denver regional science fair, and put on science policy-focused events. Earlier this year, Laurie co-organized a STEM Poster Day at the CO Capitol where they held a workshop for 50 scientists from all over Colorado on how to make a poster tailored to a non-science audience, and then they were able to present these posters to legislators and the public at the State Capitol! 

Outside of lab, Laurie loves going to bass music shows and festivals. “The live music scene in Denver (aka the Bass Capitol) is incredible!” The best advice Laurie has for new graduate students is to make friends both within and outside of your grad program. “Having a strong support system has made grad school so much easier!”