Akter Also Presented at the American Society for Microbiology Meeting in Washington DC.
Mahfuza Akter, a PhD candidate in Clarkson’s Biology Department’s Interdisciplinary Bioscience and Biotechnology (IBB) program, presented at an invitation-only workshop on Evolutionary Dynamics and Processes at the world-renowned Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plon, Germany in early June. The workshop brought together around 60 expert scientists and promising graduate students from around the world. Mahfuza was selected to give a poster presentation on a part of her PhD research, entitled “Evolution of Bacterial Populations in Response to Antibiotic and Spatial Structure”.
Also in June, she gave an oral presentation entitled “The Evolutionary Dynamics of Tradeoffs Between Motility, Antibiotic Resistance, and Fitness in Bacteria Populations Evolving in Spatially Structured Environments” at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (Microbe-2022) in Washington D.C.
Mahfuza was grateful to receive financial support to attend these meetings from Clarkson’s School of Arts & Sciences, the Biology Department, and the Graduate School (as a prize for winning second place in Clarkson’s 3-Minute-Thesis competition).
Mahfuza’s research, advised by Assistant Biology Professor Susan Bailey, focuses on understanding the evolution of antibiotic resistance in heterogeneous environment. She works primarily with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium best known for contributing to chronic lung infections in Cystic Fibrosis patients, ultimately aiming to identify strategies for treatment and management of antibiotic resistant infections. Mahfuza also works as a Teaching Assistant for Microbiology and the Molecular Biology Lab in the Biology Department.
