The Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology's weekly Plant Pathology 250 seminar series is presented this week by:

Patricia Holt-Torres, Microbiology Graduate Student (PhD), UC Riverside

Seminar Title: "Magnesium Oxide and Magnesium Hydroxide Nanoparticles Disrupt Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus epidermidis, and Staphylococcus aureus Biofilms in vitro"

Biography: Patricia completed her Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Master of Science in Biology at California State University, San Bernardino. She joined the Huinan Liu laboratory in the Dept. of Bioengineering in 2019 where she continues to examine the antibacterial and antibiofilm properties of bioresorbable nanoparticles. 

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Roxanna Pignolet, Microbiology Graduate Student (PhD), UC Riverside 

Seminar Title: "Developing a mechanistic understanding of the aerobic microbial transformation of fluorotelomer-based PFAS precursors"

Biography: Roxanna completed her B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UC Davis in 2020. Before starting her PhD in 2022, she worked as a staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where she focused on bioremediation research. As a PhD student in Dr. Yujie Men's lab, she is investigating how microbes break down the recalcitrant environmental contaminants known as PFAS.

Faculty Hosts: Dr. Emma Aronson; emma.aronson@ucr.edu