Graduate Student
University of Pittsburgh
Emma Mills, B.S., PhD Graduate Student, University of Pittsburgh.
Emma grew up in the State College area where she received her Bachelors in Immunology and Infectious Disease from The Pennsylvania State University. There, she was guided by Dr. Jasna Kovac in characterizing the relationship between phenotypic and genotypic resistance of the foodborne pathogen Bacillus cereus. After graduation, she did a 2-year ORISE Bioinformatics Fellowship with the Multidrug-Resistant Organism Repository and Surveillance Network (MRSN) at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland. There, she performed patient transmission surveillance of hospital-associated pathogens for military treatment facilities in the United States and overseas. Emma has continued her interest in these efforts through joining the Van Tyne lab in Spring 2023. Here, she focuses on the population dynamics of Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus faecium within the UPMC healthcare system.