PhD Candidate
Dartmouth College
Kaitlyn Barrack is a fourth year PhD candidate in the O’Toole Lab at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine. She completed her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2019. Throughout her undergraduate career, she worked in the lab of Dr. Li-Jun Ma studying the mechanisms of infection by the human fungal pathogen, Fusarium oxysporum. This resulted in a poster presentation at a state-wide conference and the completion of her honors thesis. Her undergraduate research experience sparked her interest in translational research and inspired her to pursue her PhD within this field. In 2020, she joined the lab of Dr. George O’Toole, with a focus on the gut microbiome in infants and children with cystic fibrosis (CF). Her primary thesis project investigates the causes and effects of microbial dysbiosis of the infant CF gut through incorporation of myriad approaches, including basic microbiology, clinical sample collection and analysis, computational biology, consultation with clinicians, and ‘omics analyses.