News

Kat Ramos Sarmiento Joins the Lab

Kat Ramos Sarmiento joins the lab as a Research Associate. Kat recently graduated with a B.S. in Microbiology from UCSD. She began her laboratory career as a laboratory assistant at Garage Brew Co., where she managed yeast strains, tracked fermentation, and monitored checkpoints in the brewing process. Later, during her time at UCSD, she was a Research Assistant in the Dutton Lab, where she studied the microbial communities that reside…

Dr. Annie Levine joins the lab

Dr. Annie Levine joins the lab as a clinical fellow. Annie is a fellow in pediatric gastroenterology at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She graduated from Harvard with a BA in Slavic Languages and Literatures and earned her MD at the University of Pittsburgh in 2017. After completing her residency in pediatrics at Brown University in Providence, RI, she moved to Seattle in 2020 to start her clinical fellowship. Annie has been…

Personalized Nutrition and Your Gut Microbiome

In ISB’s first-ever Research Roundtable event, Assistant Professor Dr. Sean Gibbons delivered a presentation titled “Gut-Check: Personalized Nutrition and Your Microbiome.” His talk covered a lot of ground, including recently published research showing how the health of our microbiomes can predict longevity, and how we can build and maintain a healthy gut microbiome. 

Overall composition of gut microbiome in participants

Variations in the Microbiome Associated with Health, Disease

ISB researchers examined the associations between the gut microbiomes of about 3,400 people and roughly 150 host characteristics. The team looked at diet, medication use, clinical blood markers, and other lifestyle and clinical factors, and found evidence that variations of the gut microbiome are associated with health and disease.

Dr. Sean Gibbons

All About the Human Microbiome

The human microbiome is a relatively new area of research, and there are numerous questions surrounding it. What is the human microbiome? Can we change it? Does it make us sick? Keep us well? ISB Assistant Professor and microbiome researcher Dr. Sean Gibbons answers these questions — and many more.

Alex Carr Joins the Lab

Alex Carr will join the Institute for Systems Biology for his PhD work, co-advised by Nitin Baliga and Sean Gibbons. Alex is a graduate student in the Molecular Engineering Program at the University of Washington. Prior to starting graduate school at UW, Alex worked in Adam Arkin’s lab at UC Berkeley, characterizing species-species interactions in synthetic gut bacterial communities. For his dissertation, Alex will pursue novel experimental and computational approaches…

Dr. Sean Gibbons joins ISB faculty as WRF Distinguished Investigator

Dr. Sean Gibbons has joined ISB as our newest faculty member. Gibbons’ new position brings a number of changes, including relocating to the Pacific Northwest from the Northeast. Read on for a Q&A with Gibbons that sheds light on his research career to date, areas of study and even a hidden talent.

Christian Diener Joins the Lab

Christian Diener will join the Institute for Systems Biology as the Washington Research Foundation Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow in the Gibbons Lab. Christian is a computational biologist who has worked extensively on yeast systems biology and has recently moved into studying the human microbiome. He completed his PhD in systems biology at the Max Plank Institute for Molecular Genetics and is currently working at the National Institute for Genome Medicine in…