2025 Midwest C. elegans Meeting

Mirella Hernandez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at the University of Michigan. She earned her bachelor of arts in Biopsychology at California State University San Bernardino (CSUSB). As an undergraduate student at CSUSB, she was accepted into the NIH-funded Diversity-promoting Institutions Drug Abuse Research Program (DIDARP). This fellowship was extremely influential in her research training. Her current graduate thesis project explores the relationship between environmental cues and their impact on lifespan and healthspan.

Jordan graduated from Truman State University with B.S. degrees in Biology and Chemistry. He then worked in several academic and commercial laboratories before joining the Shaye Lab in 2022 as a graduate student in the GEMS program at UICCOM. His current research focuses on signaling pathways regulating tube formation in C. elegans and angiogenic behaviors in human cells in vitro. He was awarded the NLHBI–funded Vascular Biology, Signaling, and Therapeutics training grant (T32) in 2022, and won the first-place poster award at the 2024 GEMS Research Symposium.

Elizabeth is a Ph.D. candidate in the lab of Dr. Scott Leiser at the University of Michigan. In 2019, she graduated from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities with degrees in Biochemistry and in Neuroscience. Next, Elizabeth started her Ph.D. in the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology at the University of Michigan, where she joined the Leiser Lab. Elizabeth is in the final year of her Ph.D., and her research focuses on understanding how the nervous system is involved in the regulation of aging as well as how peripheral metabolism feeds back to modify neural signaling.

Peter Kropp received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Molecular Physiology and Biophysics in 2012 and he then moved to the National Institutes of Health for a postdoctoral fellowship with Andy Golden. It was at the NIH that Peter was trained in rare disease modeling in C. elegans. Building on his interest in the intersection of metabolism and development, Peter started modeling rare mitochondrial diseases to try to elucidate genotype-phenotype relationships of understudied mitochondrial pathways. Peter’s postdoc work has fueled research in his own lab at Kenyon College where he joined the faculty in 2022. His lab continues to work on rare mitochondrial diseases with a focus on MEPAN syndrome and Multiple Mitochondrial Dysfunctions Syndrome 1. His lab uses a diversity of techniques, from the molecular to the behavioral, to understand the causes and consequences of mitochondrial dysfunction. Peter has had the privilege of mentoring 12 undergraduates in his lab to date and sharing the joys of worms with them. In 2024, Peter was appointed to the Harvey F. Lodish Faculty Development Chair in the Natural Sciences.

Dr. Andrea Scharf specialized in the study of aging as a life history trait and its impact on population dynamics. Her lab integrates cellular, organismal, and population-level biology to uncover the mechanisms driving life history traits like aging, with a focus on (1) the impact of aging on population dynamics, (2) premature aging induced by environmental factors, and (3) inter-individual communication of environmental effects within populations.

Prof. Schroeder studied chemistry and physics at the University of Hamburg, where he worked with Prof. Wittko Francke, identifying structures and functions of insect-derived natural products. Schroeder continued to develop new approaches toward characterizing biological small molecules as a postdoc with Jerrold Meinwald at Cornell University and later Jon Clardy’s group at Harvard Medical School as the Director of the Natural Products Initiative, where he discovered C. elegans as a model system for small molecule signaling and biochemistry. Schroeder started his own lab at BTI/Cornell University in 2007.

Research in the Schroeder lab is dedicated to facilitating a systematic structural and functional annotation of biogenic small molecules (BSMs) in model organisms, integrating expertise in molecular biology, bioinformatics, and chemistry. BSMs play central roles as information carriers in diverse biological processes and represent the most important resource for new drug leads, e.g., the treatment of metabolic disease and cancer. Moreover, detailed knowledge of small-molecule structures, their biosynthetic pathways, and their interactions with other biomolecules is essential for advancing our understanding of endocrine and exocrine signaling pathways.

Combining comparative metabolomics with phenotypic screens and genetic approaches, we have engaged in a comprehensive effort to characterize the metabolome (the entirety of all BSMs) produced by the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, focusing on metabolites that control development, aging, and social behaviors. Encouraged by the success of our methods in the model system C. elegans, we have started a parallel effort to investigate tissue-specific differences in mammalian metabolomes, including changes in response to alteration of the composition of the gut microbiome. These studies indicate that mammals employ similarly extensive small molecule-based signaling networks that rely to a significant extent on not yet annotated BSMs.

Kavya Thaker is a senior at Kenyon College pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Molecular Biology with a concentration in Public Policy. Over the past two and a half years, she has been a research assistant in Dr. Peter Kropp’s lab studying Multiple Mitochondrial Dysfunction Syndrome I, a rare mitochondrial disorder, using a C. elegans model. Her research focuses on understanding how mitochondrial dysfunction impacts chemosensation to uncover broader disease mechanisms. She was also selected for the Pelotonia Research Program at The Ohio State University’s Center for Cancer Health Equity, where she analyzed the impact of long COVID on Ohio’s minority and vulnerable populations under the mentorship of Dr. Electra Paskett. Kavya’s future goals include advancing her research skills while integrating epidemiological and population health approaches to address complex challenges posed by diseases.

Ian Weigle is a Ph.D. candidate in the Neurobiology program at the University of Chicago. Ian began his scientific career at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, earning a bachelor’s degree in Physiology. Before graduate school, Ian worked as a research technician in Dr. Sangram Sisodia’s lab at the University of Chicago, studying the role of the gut microbiome in Alzheimer’s disease using transgenic mouse models. During this time, he contributed to multiple peer-reviewed publications, including two second-author manuscripts. Now a graduate student in Dr. Paschalis Kratsios’s lab at UChicago, Ian investigates selective neuronal vulnerability in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), using C. elegans to study how G4C2 repeat expansions in C9ORF72 drive motor neuron degeneration. Ian’s research combines molecular genetics, confocal microscopy, and behavioral analysis to identify key factors contributing to neurodegeneration in ALS.

Dr. Nick Burton explores how our environment, especially microbes, can impact our health and the health of our offspring — even before they are born. His research has extensive implications for understanding how epigenetics contributes to human disease and how the environment we are exposed to today affects not only our own health, but also our children’s.

Dr. Andrea Scharf specialized in the study of aging as a life history trait and its impact on population dynamics. Her lab integrates cellular, organismal, and population-level biology to uncover the mechanisms driving life history traits like aging, with a focus on (1) the impact of aging on population dynamics, (2) premature aging induced by environmental factors, and (3) inter-individual communication of environmental effects within populations.