Dr. Rebecca D. Klaper
Dr. Rebecca D. Klaper is a Professor at the School of Freshwater Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Director of the Great Lakes Genomics Center. Dr. Klaper and her lab conduct basic and applied research to inform policy decisions involving freshwater resources. More specifically she studies the potential impact of emerging contaminants, such as nanoparticles and pharmaceuticals on aquatic life and how we may design these chemicals to minimize their environmental impact. She uses genomic technologies to examine the mechanisms by which pollutants may impact freshwater organisms and how transcriptomics may help us to determine common and varying responses of organisms to environmental stressors. Dr. Klaper received her Ph.D. in Ecology from the Institute of Ecology, University of Georgia her M.S. in Entomology from UGA and her B.S. in Honors Biology at University of Illinois.
Dr. Rebecca D. Klaper
Angela Schmoldt
Angela Schmoldt has a B.S. in Biology from Wisconsin Lutheran College. Her research experience includes work in developmental biology labs studying heart development with mice, nervous system development with zebra fish and affects of pesticides on lake trout. Angie has been a research specialist at the Great Lakes WATER Institute for 10 years and is now the lead Research Specialist in the Great Lakes Genomics Center and its founding staff member.
Angela Schmoldt
Olaf Mueller, Ph.D.
My research is focused on the genomic and molecular basis for cellular interactions in pathogenic, symbiotic and commensal microbes. During my career I combined experimental and computational approaches to explore pathogen-host interactions of the fungal plant pathogen Ustilago maydis and related fungal species with their respective host organisms. My work identified new secreted effector proteins, which are essential for the early stages of pathogenic development. In subsequent research appointments, I shifted exclusively to computational biology and bioinformatics. I expanded my studies to the field of lichen symbiosis, aimed to improve our understanding of the genomic foundation for symbiotic relationships between lichen phyto- and mycosymbionts. During my appointment as Bioinformatician II at the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology (MGM) at Duke University Medical Center, I conducted a broad range of bioinformatic, medical research, targeted at diverse fungal and bacterial human pathogens, like Cryptococcus and Chlamydia, as well as commensal microbes, like Exiguobacterium. Further, ongoing studies included the characterization of microbial communities, in a broad range of basic research of human diseases, and environmental microbial habitats