
Susan graduated from the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she studied Molecular/Cellular Biology and Chemistry. While at UIUC, she worked in the lab of Prof. Aditi Das. Following graduation, she received a Fulbright fellowship to study host immune responses to phage therapy and worked at the Univ. of Illinois-Chicago College of Pharmacy characterizing natural products active against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 2017, she matriculated into the UW-Madison MD/PhD program and in 2020 began her PhD in the Currie Lab through the Microbiology Doctoral Training Program. She is interested in human symbiont microbe-microbial and host-microbial interactions that provide colonization resistance against pathogens and serve as sources of novel antimicrobials. Through this work, she hopes to better understand how human-associated microbes influence health and to address the growing challenge of antimicrobial drug resistance. When not in lab, Susan enjoys reading and running.