Graduate Students Develop the “Other” Skills Needed For a Successful Career in Microbiome Research
Graduate students Taiwo Bankole, Sylvia Jacobson, and Ujjwol Subedi gained new insights from the graduate fellowship program of the Center of Excellence in Microbiome Sciences.
Image Credit: (L to R) Minna Shezaf, Felix Alabi, and Samiksha Bhattarai
Putting on a scientific event, a panel discussion or conference may seem like a commonplace responsibility for someone working in academia, but a handful of graduate students are learning firsthand just how complex it really is. Along the way, they’re learning to speak each other’s languages and collaborate in ways that are atypical of a graduate program.
“We all speak slightly different scientific languages,” said food science PhD student Ujjwol Subedi. “So, bringing our varied viewpoints together to organize seminars and projects meant actually putting teamwork and big-picture thinking into practice.”
Subedi is one of seven fellows in the graduate fellowship program of the Center of Excellence in Microbiome Sciences at UMD. His observation is exactly the point of the program, which was established to build some of the informal skills needed for a successful career in the sciences. Co-directed by environmental science & technology Professor Stephanie Yarwood and biology Associate Research Scientist Gabi Steinbach, the program is a five-part summer workshop series covering team science, systems thinking, project management, science and society, and communications. The summer is just the start though. Throughout the following fall, the fellows plan, execute, and host a public event around their chosen topic.
This November, the current cohort will present "Expanding Access to Microbiome Research and Tools to Improve Human and Environmental Health: A Discussion Among Societal Stakeholders."
The event will feature four speakers who hail from academia, non-profit, and government sectors. Pulling it together has required the fellows to work across disciplines, develop and agree on a shared topic, and identify and successfully secure appropriate panelists, including experts from outside academia who can discuss how research applies to the real world.
Although the seven fellows all focus on microbiome research, each graduate student brought experience from very different fields to the table. Three are housed at AGNR.
Sylvia Jacobson works under Assistant Professor Jared Wilmoth and studies how sea-level-driven flooding reshapes coastal wetland soils. Her work investigates how flooding determines which microbes live in tidal wetlands and how those microbial communities transform soil carbon. The answers to her questions are important for understanding wetland soil stability and methane emissions from wetlands, all of which impact the role of wetlands in storing carbon, supporting local communities and serving as buffers from storms.
Subedi works under nutrition & food science Professor Abani Pradhan and is developing natural, plant-based antimicrobial formulas as sustainable alternatives to chemical sanitizers for fresh produce. He tests the nanoemulsions he is developing against pathogens like Salmonella, E. coli O157 and Listeria in both lab and real-world conditions before and after harvest. He hopes to bring microbiome science and machine learning into his toolkit to find natural microbial allies that can suppress contamination at the source.
Taiwo Bankole studies in the lab of nutrition and food science Assistant Professor Yuanyuan Rose Li. She investigates how functional foods that improve gut health might also help prevent and manage chronic diseases like obesity and obesity-related diseases. She is investigating how these foods change biomarkers in the blood, feces, and gene expression in certain tissues of the body. Her goal is to translate her findings into products that capitalize on the compounds in beneficial plant-based foods to help people with chronic diseases.
All three said the benefits of collaborating with colleagues working in microbiome research from different disciplines across campus has been a valuable experience that will benefit them in their work and careers.
“Microbiome research requires collaboration across disciplines,” said Bankole, “and I wanted practical experience coordinating with researchers who use different methodologies and technical vocabularies.” Along the way, Bankole said she also learned to better articulate her research to a broader audience and gained a better understanding of her own working style and preferences that will help her manage collaborative projects more efficiently.
Jacobson said the fellowship offered her the chance to step outside of her usual research circle, and it also sharpened career skills like science communication and collaboration. “It can be challenging to coordinate with a big group to make sure that everyone is on the same page with the project, but it’s an important skill to learn how to do this together,” she said.
Subedi echoed the sentiments of his colleagues and said the fellowship demonstrated that good communication and project management is just as vital as good lab skills. “The fellowship has been instrumental in refining essential professional skills that aren't typically taught in standard curricula,” he said. “The dedicated workshops on systems thinking, team science, project management, and constructive feedback have completely reshaped how I structure research goals and communicate across disciplines.”
The panel discussion:
"Expanding Access to Microbiome Research and Tools to Improve Human and Environmental Health: A Discussion Among Societal Stakeholders," will be held November 17, 2026, from 3 to 5 p.m.
Panelists to date include:
Public health professor and water reuse researcher Amy Sapkota
Assistant Director for Education at Maryland Sea Grant John Frederick
EcoCity Farms compost manager Thomas Fazio
RSVP at this link.
