Katie Bates
Graduate Student

Delaney Beals
Graduate Student

B.A. Chemistry (Biochemistry Concentration), University of North Carolina at Asheville

Delaney has been a graduate student at the University of Utah since 2019. Her research in the Puri lab has focused on bridging the gap between how researchers study methane-oxidizing  bacteria in the lab to how these carbon-cycling microbes behave in the natural environment and among the greater soil community. This work has involved developing a lab-based model ecosystem to study these bacteria in a spatially resolved context, measuring the methane flux and microbial communities directly from a local Utah forest field site, and using bioinformatics to find the (meta)genomic and (meta)transcriptomic basis for interspecies interactions.

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/delaney-beals
GitHub: https://github.com/delaney-beals

Rachel Hurrell
Graduate Student

B.S. Chemistry, University of Indianapolis

Rachel conducted undergraduate research under Dr. Levi Mielke investigating the purity and quality of antibiotics using reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography. This project was in conjunction with the University of Notre Dame and the World Health Organization with the ultimate goal of identifying substandard and falsified pharmaceuticals distributed in developing nations. Rachel has been a graduate student at the University of Utah in the Department of Chemistry and the Henry Eyring Center for Cell and Genome Science since 2020.

Iqra Ilyas
Graduate Student

B.S. Chemistry, Govt. College University (GCU), Lahore
M.S. Organic Chemistry, Iowa State University

Iqra conducted her undergraduate research in the Nano Lab at GCU Lahore where she worked on optimization of reaction conditions for synthesis of nanocomposites and utilized them as catalysts in organic synthesis. As a master’s student at Iowa State University, she worked in the Zhao Lab on developing Molecularly Imprinted Nanoparticles (MINPs) as artificial catalysts for the Henry Reaction. She joined the University of Utah as a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry and Henry Eyring Center for Cell and Genome Science in 2023.

Tashi Liebergesell
Graduate Student

B.S. Biochemistry, Gonzaga University

Tashi conducted undergraduate research in the Ross Lab at Gonzaga University, where she worked on using capillarity electrophoresis to study binding affinities of ion-ionophore complexes in lipid environments. She has been a graduate student at the University of Utah in the Department of Chemistry and the Henry Eyring Center for Cell and Genome Science since 2022.

William McTaggart
Graduate Student

B.S. Biochemistry, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
B.S. Chemistry, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Will conducted undergraduate research under Dr. Emily Fogle at Cal Poly, SLO, where he helped characterize acid phosphatase from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and N-acetylglutamate synthase from Bacillus acidocaldarius. He worked at ARUP Laboratories in Salt Lake City for 1.5 years before becoming a graduate student at the University of Utah in the Department of Chemistry and the Henry Eyring Center for Cell and Genome Science in 2022.

Victoria Medvedeva
Research Associate

Samantha Morris
Undergraduate Student
2024 UROP Scholar

Maddox Riewald
Undergraduate Student
2023 UROP Scholar (2X)
2024 Francis Family Scholar
2024 NSF REU Recipient

Jose Miguel Robes
Graduate Student

BS Biology, University of the Philippines (UP) Baguio

Miguel performed research in the Concepcion Lab at UP Diliman and in collaboration with the Haygood and Schmidt Lab at the University of Utah Department of Medicinal Chemistry, where he worked as a microbiologist on the isolation and purification of natural products from mollusk associated bacteria. He has been a graduate student at the University of Utah in the Department of Chemistry and the Henry Eyring Center for Cell and Genome Science since 2020.

Mike Wallace
Graduate Student

B.S. Biochemistry, University of Cincinnati

Mike performed undergraduate research in the Merino Lab at the University of Cincinnati, where he worked on the organic synthesis of chemical probes for use in anti-fungal drug development. He has been a graduate student at the University of Utah in the Department of Chemistry and the Henry Eyring Center for Cell and Genome Science since 2020.