Hello, readers! I’m Dr. Sue Ishaq, the newest Research Assistant Professor hire in the BioBE center at the University of Oregon. I’ve been at the center for two weeks now, and I thought I’d introduce myself as I’ll soon be a regular contributor to the center’s research efforts and blog. I’m a microbial ecologist with a focus on host-associated microbiomes. My baccalaureate and doctorate were both in animal science and nutrition from the University of Vermont, in Burlington. As a Ph.D. student in the Wright Lab, my work focused on identifying and manipulating the bacteria, methanogens, and protozoa in the rumen of the North American moose. For the past two years, I was a post-doctoral researcher at Montana State University, in Bozeman. For one year, I was in the Department of Animal and Range Sciences performing the bioinformatic analyses for multiple host-associated and environmental projects in the Yeoman Lab. My second year was in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences in the Menalled Lab, where I was part of a large project investigating the effect of climate change on wheat production. For my part, this meant assessing the changes to soil bacteria over time and under different climate scenarios.
Here at the BioBE, I’ll be adding my experience in host-associated microbiomes, bacterial ecology, and health, to the growing collaborative research team. Over the course of the summer, I’ll be writing several grants and organizing new projects that explore how building design, occupancy, pets, and human habits affect human health and the indoor microbiome. If you happened to have been at the Health + Energy Research Consortium, held in Portland in May, you might have seen me around, and I’ll also be at the Ecological Society of America meeting in Portland, OR in August. You can follow me on my personal blog and, of course, you can find me on the BioBE blog!