Michael Baym

Principal Investigator
Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics
Affiliate Faculty in Microbiology
Member of the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology
Associate Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Michael is a microbiologist and applied mathematician studying bacterial evolution and computational genomics. He was a graduate student with Bonnie Berger in Mathematics at MIT, and a postdoctoral fellow with Roy Kishony in Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. He has won several awards for research including a Packard Fellowship, a Pew Biomedical Scholarship, a Sloan Research Fellowship, as well a Hertz Graduate Fellowship. He holds over five dozen issued patents. His mentorship has been recognized by Harvard Medical School with the A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award and by the SSQBio graduate program's mentorship award. Michael is originally from Urbana, Illinois and Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA. He was once the tenth Google Image result for "floating dumpster fire."

Email: baym@hms.harvard.edu
Twitter: @baym, Bluesky: @baym.lol
Erdős number: 2
CV (PDF, 12/3/24), Google Scholar, Pubmed, USPTO Issued Patents, USPTO Patent Applications, ORCID: 0000-0003-1303-5598

Blox Bloxham

Postdoctoral Fellow

Blox is fascinated by how competition between mobile genetic elements shapes their ecology and evolution.  Their scientific journey has spanned everything from low-cost medical diagnostics to neuroscience to microbial ecology, blending theory and experiment.  They completed their PhD at MIT with Jeff Gore, studying how microbes’ differing resource preferences define their interactions.  Outside of lab, they enjoy climbing mountains and rock walls, descending ski slopes and slot canyons, and anything else outdoors!

Email: blox@hms.harvard.edu
Google Scholar, ORCID: 0000-0002-6133-8414

Kesther Jean

Undergraduate Researcher (Roxbury CC)

Kesther is endlessly curious about science, but nothing fascinates her more in the lab than working with bacteriophages. Outside the lab, you'll find her trying new cuisines or absorbed in a painting project.

🇭🇹
Email: kdjean@roxbury.edu

Arya Kaul

Graduate Student (BIG)

Arya is trying to figure out where new bacterial genes come from, and analyzing bacterial sequences from before the age of antibiotics.

🇺🇸
Email: arya_kaul@g.harvard.edu
Favorite film franchise: Paddington 🐻
Personal Homepage, ORCID: 0000-0001-8382-5945

Jess Liang

Undergraduate Researcher (Harvard)

Jess is studying within-host antibiotic resistance evolution. Outside of the lab, she can be found working on crochet projects and doing taekwondo.

Email: jessicaliang@college.harvard.edu
ORCID: 0009-0009-8974-9053

Kepler Mears

Graduate Student (BBS)

Kepler works on the interactions between plasmids and transposons with a specific interest in CRISPR ancestors. Prior to graduate school he worked on viral bioengineering at the Broad Institute and cooked at Da LaPosta in Newton.

Email: keplermears@g.harvard.edu
Net displacement: 1,178.42ft (359.18m)
Google Scholar, ORCID: 0000-0003-2566-3532

Shreyas Pai

Graduate Student (SSQBio)

Shreyas loves all things evolution, from social evolution to evolutionary conflicts to levels of selection. Outside the lab, he enjoys cricket, football, tennis, and board games.

Email: shreyaspai@g.harvard.edu
Twitter: @TheShreyasPai

Eleanor A. Rand

Graduate Student (SSQBio)

Ellie is working on a novel assay for environmental phage discovery. She is interested in both the ecological and clinical impacts that phages have on bacterial populations. She once threw out the first pitch for the NC Dinos (NC 다이노스).

🇺🇸
Email: eleanor_rand@g.harvard.edu
Twitter: @EllieRand3
ORCID: 0000-0003-0775-2064

Fernando W. Rossine

Postdoctoral Fellow

Fernando is interested in the evolutionary dynamics of plasmid-borne genes. He is also a slime mold whisperer and tie dye wizard.

🇧🇷
Email: fernando_rossine@hms.harvard.edu
Twitter: @Fernpizza

Tatiana Ruiz-Bedoya

Postdoctoral Fellow (joint with Desai Lab)

Tatiana thinks that rapid microbial adaptation is one of the most fascinating biological phenomena and wants to broadly study how we can mix experiments and theory to understand and predict evolutionary and ecological outcomes in host-pathogen interactions. When not in the lab, she loves being out in nature, climbing and hiking mountains, running, scuba diving; everything outdoors!

🇨🇴
Email: ruizbedoya_tatiana@fas.harvard.edu
Twitter: @RuizBedoyaT
Google Scholar, GitHub, ORCID: 0000-0002-4858-846X

Laura C. Suttenfield

Postdoctoral Fellow

Laura is interested in the impact of mobile genetic elements on bacterial genome evolution, and how that interaction shapes the emergence of antibiotic resistance. She earned her PhD in the Dept. of Microbiology, UIUC, in Rachel Whitaker’s lab.  

Practicing: French, for loops, piano, Python, ultimate frisbee.
Email: laura_suttenfield@hms.harvard.edu
Twitter: @LCSuttenfield
ORCID: 0009-0009-0423-609X

Sophia Wiesenfeld

Graduate Student (SSQBio)

Sophia's microbiologist origin story started with Brian Hammer at Georgia Tech, she's in graduate school to continue that arc.

Email: swiesenfeld@g.harvard.edu
ORCID: 0000-0003-0280-3838

Amy Zamora

Graduate Student (SSQBio)

Amy is interested in temperate bacteriophages and the roles they play in evolution; particularly with regards to antibiotic resistance evolution and bacteriophage competition. When not in lab, Amy loves to rock climb, run obscenely long distances, and climb mountains! ⛰

Email: azamora@g.harvard.edu
ORCID: 0000-0001-8796-9292

Jasmijn Baaijens

Assistant Professor of Computer Science, TU Delft
Visiting Researcher

Jasmijn is interested in genome reconstruction from sequencing reads, as well as other biological problems that can be solved through graph theory and mathematical optimization.

🇳🇱
Email: j.a.baaijens@tudelft.nl
Twitter: @jasmijnbaaijens
Google Scholar, ORCID: 0000-0001-5661-0658

 

Postdocs

Célia Souque
   Last seen: ECDC EUPHEM Fellow at Norwegian Institute of Public Health

Siân V. Owen
   Last seen: Research Scientist, Wadsworth Center, and Assistant Professor, SUNY Albany

Lucy M. McCully
   Last seen: Viral Sequencing Microbiologist, Massachusetts Department of Public Health

Karel Břinda
   Last seen: INRIA Starting Faculty, INRIA, Rennes

Cristina Herren
   Last seen: Assistant Teaching Professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences, Northeastern University

Jasmijn Baaijens
   Last seen: Assistant Professor of Computer Science, TU Delft

PhD Students

Natalia Quinones-Olvera (SSQBio)
   Last seen: Postdoc, Broad Institute (Zhang Lab)

Anurag Limdi (MCO)
   Last seen: Data Scientist, Apriori Bio

Masters' Students

Adele Collin (BMI)

Eve Rahbé (EPFL).
   Last seen: PhD Student, Institut Pasteur

Simone Pignotti (LIGM/CNRS Université Paris-Est).
   Last seen: Bioinformatics Team Lead, Eligo Bioscience

Undergraduate Students

Caspar Carson (HMS Sysbio Summer Intern)
   Last seen: Undergraduate Student, SUNY Binghamton

Alice Fan (HMS Sysbio Summer Intern)
   Last seen: PhD Student, Harvard

Carmen Hernandez-Perez (HMS SHURP)
   Last seen: PhD Student, University of Minnesota

Katelyn Lee (HMS Sysbio Summer Intern)
   Last seen: PhD Student, Columbia University

Mische Holland (HMS SIBMI)
   Last seen: PhD Student, University of Pittsburgh

Elle Deich (MIT MSRP)

Isabel Ott
   Last seen: PhD Student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

P. Winston Michalak

Technicians

Kaylee Mueller, Research Associate
   Last seen: PathAI

Victoria Jones, Research Associate
   Last seen: Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals