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shade lab

understanding microbiome resilience

Our Team

Prof. Ashley Shade, Ph.D. Ashley (she/her/hers) is Director of Research with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Questions about microbiome resilience keep her awake at night. @ashley17061	Victor Bal Victor (he/him/his) is a doctoral student in the E2M2 school at University Lyon. His research aims to understand the relationship between dormancy and persister phenotypes in an opportunistic pathogen that associates with the rhizosphere. He is co-advised by Ashley, Sabine Favre-Bonté and Thibault Meyer.	Dr. Milena Gonzalo Milena (she/her/hers) is a research engineer and project manager for the ERC MicroRescue. Her expertise is in environmental microbial ecology and also plant-microbiome interactions.
Dr. Xipeng Liu Xipeng (he/him/his) is a CNRS post-doc working on the MicroRescue project. His interest is in microbial ecological theory, including community coalescence. @XipengLiu7	Dr. Ludivine Guigard Ludivine (she/her/hers) is a UCBL post-doc working on the MicroRescue ETOILES award to develop methods to discriminate bacterial activities in soil. Her research interests are understanding plant-microbiome interactions. @LGuigard1	Dr. A. Fina Bintarti Fina (she/her/hers) is leading our MicroRescue project research on plant-microbiome resilience to drought.
Margaux Buron, M.Sc. Margaux is a research technician supporting our investigation of plant-microbiome resilience for the MicroRescue project.	Emma Chavan Emma Chavan is a Ph.D. student in the E2M2 graduate school and her research investigates how inactive microbes can activate to help plants recover from stress.	You? We're always excited to welcome new members who are passionate about microbial ecology and evolution, and who share our values of scientific integrity, teamwork and inclusion. See the "join" page for more information.

Off into the world!
Previous ShadeLab Team Members

Dr. Sam Barnett was a post-doc working with diverse interests and worked on the Centralia and collaborative permafrost microbiome projects. Current position: Assistant professor, Grand Valley State University	Dr. Andreas Ulmer was a post-doc co-supervised on a collaborative project with Prof. Rosalind Allen at the German Microverse Cluster of Excellence. Current position: Post-doc at University of Warwick.	Abby Sulesky-Grieb (she/her/hers) earned her Ph.D. in the ShadeLab with the MGI (formerly MMG) and Ecology Evolution and Behavior programs at Michigan State. She graduated in 2024 and is currently a post-doc at Michigan State.
Keara Grady, MSc, (she/her/hers) was our amazing lab manager for our whole time at MSU! She now works with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at Michigan State.	Dr. Marco Mechan Llontop (he/him/his) was a Keegstra Post-doctoral fellow with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. He is currently a research associate at the Van Andel Institute.	Dr. Sreejata Bandopadhyay was a post-doctoral scholar with the lab. Her research aimed to understand how plants recruit and assemble microbes to the rhizosphere during stress. She is currently a post-doctoral scholar at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Dr. John Chodkowski received his PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics in 2021. His research applied synthetic communities and metabolomics to understand microbial interactions. He is currently a bioinformatics specialist with the Michigan Public Health Institute.	Dr. Gian Nico Bernucci (he/his) is a Microbiome Analyst with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.	Oishi Bagchi graduated from the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics with a MSc in 2022. Her research investigated the activity dynamics of root and soil microbiomes in response to plant stress signals. She is now a molecular microbiologist with the Michigan Public Health Institute (MPHI).
Joanna Colovas, MSc graduated from the Dept. Microbiology and Molecular Genetics with a dual BS/MSc degree in 2022. Her research investigated the microbiome of seeds, roots, and rhizosphere of common bean to determine their roles in stress tolerance for the next plant generation. She is now a bioinformaticist at Michigan Medicine.	Dr. Nejc Stopnisek performed post-doctoral research on ShadeLab projects with the Plant Resilience Institute from 2017-2020. He is now the department head of the Agricultura, Ecology and Natural Resources at the Agricultural Institute of Slovenia.	Dr. John Guittar performed post-doc research in gut microbiome ecology from 2017-2020; he was co-advised by Prof. Elena Litchman. He is currently a Computational Biologist at Tempus AI
Alan conducted PRI post-doctoral research on plant-microbiome projects with the ShadeLab from 2018-2019, and worked with us as a bioinformatic consultant until July 2020. He is now a data analyst at AutoOwner's Insurance.	Jess (she/hers) is a ShadeLab alum who graduated in 2019 with a PhD from the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. She is currently a public educator (Curiosity Collaborator!) at the Museum of Science and Curiosity in Sacramento, CA USA	Taylor is a ShadeLab alum who graduated in 2019 with a PhD from the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and Environmental and Integrative Toxicological Sciences programs. She is now the Director of Science Communication with the Environmental Working Group.
Pat performed post-doc research with the PRI on plant resilience studies, and then moved back home to Boston to post-doc with Ben Wolfe at Tufts University. He is now faculty at Northeastern University.	Sang-Hoon performed post-doc research both on Centralia and GLBRC projects, and currently is a researcher at Korea University in Seoul.

Our Global Connections:

ShadeLab Visiting Scholars

Prof. Wei Zheng was a visiting scholar to the LEM from 2025-2026 and is faculty at Northwest Agricultural University in Yangling, China.	Prof. Keisuke Miyauchi was a visiting scholar in 2021-2022 from the Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Tohoku Gakuin University, Japan.	Prof. Eliana Guedes-Stehling is a professor of microbiology at the University of São Paulo, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirão Preto. She won a FAPESP fellowship to spend her sabbatical with ShadeLab during the 2019-2020 academic year. During that time she learned bioinformatic approaches for targeted gene assembly of antibiotic resistance genes from metagenomes.
Dr. Jian Hu is a lecturer in the College of Agro-grassland Science at Nanjing Agricultural University in China. The China Scholarship Council supported him to to spend a year with ShadeLab (2019-2020) to work on biotic stress and plant microbiomes with the GLBRC.

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