Dr. Melanie Harasym
M.S., St. John s University
Ph.D., Northeastern University
Melanie Harasym’s doctoral research focused on the molecular development of Streptomyces bacteria. Streptomyces are very common in soil and produce most of the medically important antibiotics used today. Dr. Harasym worked on a sabbatical project at the Molecular Systematics Laboratory at the American Museum of Natural History that involved building a phylogenetic tree showing the evolutionary relatedness of bacteria in the vibrio family, a group of bacteria that includes the agent of cholera. She has involved numerous CNR undergraduates in her research projects.
Dr. Harasym had her most recent sabbatical (Spring 2010) at Columbia University Medical Center working with Paul Planet, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric infectious disease specialist, on a project analyzing the bacteria from the lungs of pediatric patients with cystic fibrosis. She continues to be involved in this project and recently attended the 26th Annual North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference (October 11-13, 2012) where she was second author on a poster titled, “Longitudinal Microbial Ecology in Cystic Fibrosis."