Ophelia Venturelli, assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is one of two researchers in the University of Wisconsin System to earn seed funding from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Shaw Scientist Program to pursue innovative approaches to advancing human health while supporting their career development.
Venturelli’s lab seeks to understand how diverse networks of microorganisms living in the human gut communicate to realize key functions that impact health. Her goal is to determine how these microbes process information in response to environmental pressures and, in turn, function collectively as a community.
The research may lead to the ability to engineer behaviors among beneficial microbes in the gut ecosystem, which could be used to enhance their resilience to invasion by pathogens or unintended impairment from antibiotics.
To read more about Venturelli and her award see the link below.
URL: https://biochem.wisc.edu/2017/05/18/venturelli-earns-shaw-scientist-award-for-work-in-biochemistry-microbiome/