Jennifer Stearns

Jennifer C. Stearns, PhD: Jennifer is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University, where, along with Dr. Michael Surette, she pushes back the boundaries of medicinal microbiology every day. She currently researches how the usually benign bacteria in the respiratory tract can sometimes make people sick. Jennifer has published over a dozen peer-reviewed papers/book chapters on plant-microbe interactions, human-associated bacterial communities, and techniques for microbial research. Captivated by the images of microbes in her mother’s nursing textbooks as a child, Jennifer eagerly soaked up knowledge about microbiology everywhere she could. Seeing her interest in all things micro, her high school biology teacher, Mr. Tunnicliffe, lent her a copy of the novel The Hot Zone, which forever made her love deadly viruses. She did the first part of her formal training at the University of Waterloo, where she harnessed the potential of microbes to improve crop plant stress in the biotechnology lab of Dr. Bernie Glick, and applied the principles of microbial ecology to the bacteria living in the human GI tract in Dr. Josh Neufeld’s lab. It was here that she was inspired by the awesome diversity of microorganisms in nature and in our everyday lives. You can follow her musings on the microbiology of the human body on the Human Microbiome Journal Club blog at http://hmjournalclub.wordpress.com.