Aurora Mattson-Hughes

While in the Gibbons Lab, Aurora was a master’s student at the University of Washington where she studied Genetic Epidemiology through the Institute for Public Health Genetics, graduating in 2023. Prior to this, she graduated from Western Washington University with a B.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology. While at WWU, she had the opportunity to work in a startup genetics lab, studying mitochondrial diseases in drosophila. Thanks to her background and the interdisciplinary nature of her master’s program, she developed many research interests, including but not limited to genome/microbiome interactions, associations between mental health and gut health, vaginal microbiome and sexual/reproductive health, and infectious disease epidemiology. At ISB, she put her skills to the test while completing her thesis work, looking at associations between physical fitness, the gut microbiome, host genetics, and blood metabolites.