Dr Jemila Caplan Kester has joined the Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab in the Department of Molecular Medicine and Pathology as a Research Fellow.
Jemila graduated summa cum laude from The City College of The City University of New York with a BS in biology. For her graduate work, Jemila joined Sarah Fortune’s lab at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she uncovered a novel role for proteolysis in the Mycobacterial cell cycle. After completing her PhD, Jemila was a Postdoctoral Associate in Linda Griffith’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she contributed to the development of a human gut-microbiome-immune fluidic system (GuMI) capable of supporting both aerobic and anaerobic growth simultaneously. Her work on the GuMI revealed new details of microbiome-immune interdependence.
During her more than 15 years at the bench, Jemila has won several awards and fellowships, including 10 years of support from the National Institutes of Health, as well as grants from the National Science Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund. Outside of lab, Jemila has participated in science education and community outreach since 2007, and teaches yoga in her Mt Eden studio.