Guests:
Marta de Menezes (Cultivamos Cultura, Portugal)
Sarah K. Lucas, Ph.D. (Syracuse University)
Followed by Q&A and informal gathering
Marta de Menezes (Cultivamos Cultura, Portugal)
https://martademenezes.com/
Marta de Menezes will discuss her work as an artist, curator, and director of Cultivamos Cultura, the leading institute for experimental artists and scientists in Portugal. She’s been recently focusing on the Immune System as a medium to explore the concept of identity. She has been working with her life partner and immunologist Luis Graça.
Marta’s work straddles the intersections of art and biology and has been exhibited in major venues across every continent. She is currently an Associate Artist at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Lisbon, Portugal. She’s doing a Fulbright Scholar in Residency at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque with Professor Andrea Polli.
Sarah K. Lucas (Biology, Syracuse University)
https://thecollege.syr.edu/people/faculty/sarah-k-lucas
Viruses make up a considerable yet understudied component of the human gut microbiome. Over 90% of human gut “virome” are viruses that infect bacteria (i.e. bacteriophages). Gut bacteriophages have been studied both as biomarkers of disease, as well as potential therapeutic agents. Sarah Lucas will present her postdoctoral research which uses computational tools to better understand gut bacteriophage diversity, predicted protein functions, and host ranges.
Sarah Lucas received a B.S. in Microbiology from Penn State University in 2010. She joined the Genomic Medicine team at J. Craig Venter Institute where she led laboratory efforts for a number of studies exploring microbial communities associated with human health and disease. Throughout her career, Sarah has continued to pursue her curiosity for the human microbiome, first earning a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota studying with Dr. Ryan Hunter, and currently as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan where she studies viruses of the gut microbiome with Dr. Pat Schloss. She will join the Biology Department at Syracuse University as an Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2023.
___________________________________________________
The Bio-Art Mixer is where art and life sciences, faculty, and students share their research and look at it from the perspective of a different discipline. The Bio Art mixer was initiated by Heidi Hehnly (Biology, SU) and Boryana Rossa (Film and Media Arts, SU) in collaboration with the Canary Lab Lab and Bioinspired Institute and is a fundamental element of the Bio-Art Research Coalition of Syracuse.