PhD candidate, Microbiology
Faculty advisor: Jan Peter van Pijkeren
Laura Alexander is a PhD candidate in the Microbiology Doctoral Training Program. She earned her bachelor’s degree in microbiology at the University of Georgia before coming to UW–Madison as part of the SciMed Graduate Research Scholars community. She also was funded on a Molecular Biosciences Training Grant at the start of her PhD study.
As a member of Dr. Jan Peter van Pijkeren’s probiotics lab, Laura focuses on the development of the probiotic Lactobacillus reuteri as a biotherapeutic delivery vehicle. She has developed a novel delivery system that she and her team expect to help streamline the engineering of biotherapeutic proteins. Laura has a number of publications on this work, including a first-author publication in the journal Applied Environmental Microbiology.