Division of Infectious Diseases Cocci Conference with NAU’s Dr. Bridget Barker

The Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine, in collaboration with the Valley Fever Center for Excellence, at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson presents:

Cocci Conference: “Multi-antigen DNA Vaccine” 

Bridget M. Barker, PhD | Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, College of the Environment, Forestry & Natural Sciences, and Researcher, Pathogen & Microbiome Institute, Northern Arizona University

Tuesday, December 17, 2024 11:00 a.m. – Noon
AHSC/COM-T Room 8403 and Zoom

About the Presenter: Dr. Bridget Barker, a member of the U of A Valley Fever Center for Excellence, received her bachelor’s degree in biology and master’s degree in ecological genetics from the University of Montana. She started her doctoral studies as an IGERT Fellow – a National Science Foundation program known as the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship – at the University of Arizona in 2004. It was at this time she became interested in working on human fungal pathogens, specifically Coccidioides immitis and C. posadasii, the causative agents of coccidioidomycosis, more commonly known as Valley fever. In 2009, Dr. Barker completed her doctorate in genetics with co-mentors Scott Kroken, PhD, and Steven Rounsley, PhD, and then started her postdoctoral work at Montana State University, where she worked to characterize the sterol regulatory element binding protein in Aspergillus fumigatus, in the lab of Robert Cramer, Jr., PhD. In 2013, she joined the faculty at Flagstaff’s TGen-North, the Pathogen and Microbiome Division of the Translational Genomics Research Institute, or TGen, an Arizona-based, nonprofit medical research organization. There, she returned to working on Coccidioides spp. with the assistance of an NIH/NIAID K-22 award. In 2016, she became a faculty member at Northern Arizona University in its Pathogen and Microbiome Institute. In 2024, she was promoted to professor with tenure in the Department of Biological Sciences at NAU.

Dr. Barker has extensive experience with genomics, bioinformatics, population and molecular genetics, and evolutionary biology. Her background in microbiology, work with fungal pathogens, and computational biology allowed her to develop and bring these new techniques to the field of Valley fever research. As a director of the Animal Biosafety Laboratory (ABSL3) at PMI, her cutting-edge methodology for characterizing the in vivo fungal transcriptomes of Coccidioides immitis and C. posadasii has led to a better understanding of the transcriptional network in a murine model of coccidioidomycosis and has led to the identification of new antigens for vaccine development. Her current work, funded by an NIH-U19 award, will move nucleic acid vaccine research forward and develop new animal models of infection. Dr. Barker is also working on developing rapid environmental testing systems to determine potential times and regions for highest exposure potential in collaboration with Arizona State University and the U of A. Finally, she is looking at the genetics of the fungus itself to determine if there are genomic characteristics of Coccidioides that explain adaptation to human hosts, how it adapts to the desert environment and non-human hosts, and adaptive potential for expansion of the endemic range. LEARN MORE

Join Zoom Meeting: https://uits-arizona.zoom.us/j/6736439286?pwd=QnIpx1bGWEfygNDMy6CGdsBf8I6l7t.1&omn=86283649660
Password: 888639

Flyer for this event:  id_cocci_conference_w_naus_dr._bridget_barker_12.17.24_flyer.pdf

This University of Arizona event is sponsored by the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, U of A College of Medicine – Tucson. It is open to the public, particularly community physicians and other interested health-care professionals.

CONTACT: Richelle Clemente, (520) 621-0190 or RClemente@arizona.edu