Meet the Microbiologist
Who is microbiology? Meet the Microbiologist (MTM) introduces you to the people who discover, innovate and advance the field of microbiology.
Go behind-the-scenes of the microbial sciences with experts in virology, bacteriology, mycology, parasitology and more! Share in their passion for microbes and hear about research successes and even a few setbacks in their field.
MTM covers everything from genomics, antibiotic resistance, synthetic biology, emerging infectious diseases, microbial ecology, public health, social equity, host-microbe biology, drug discovery, artificial intelligence, the microbiome and more!
From graduate students to working clinicians and emeritus professors, host, Ashley Hagen, Scientific and Digital Editor at the American Society for Microbiology, highlights professionals in all stages of their careers, gleaning wisdom, career advice and even a bit of mentorship along the way.
- Update frequency
- every 20 days
- Average duration
- 40 minutes
- Episodes
- 169
- Years Active
- 2008 - 2025
068: Microbiomes everywhere with Jack Gilbert
Jack Gilbert talks about his studies on microbiomes of all sorts. He describes the origin of the Earth Microbiome Project, which has ambitions to characterize all microbial life on the planet, and ta…
067: MRSA in agriculture and zombie epidemiology with Tara C. Smith
Tara C. Smith discusses her work uncovering ties between agriculture and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Her studies have found MRSA on and around pig farms, on animal handlers, a…
066: Insect-pathogenic fungi as fertilizers and mosquito control with Raymond St. Leger
Raymond St. Leger describes his work on insect pathogenic fungi. Members of this diverse group of fungi can be found as part of the plant rhizosphere, where they provide nutrients to the plant, and c…
065: Polio Research Breakthroughs with Vincent Racaniello
Vincent Racaniello discusses how he ended up studying polio virus and the three eureka moments he’s experienced so far: uncovering the polio genome, discovering the polio receptor, and generating a m…
Welcome to Meet the Microbiologist!
Welcome back, Meet the Scientist subscribers! For those of you who never heard an episode of Meet the Scientist, thanks for taking a listen. We're excited to tell all of you we're now Meet the Microb…
MTS64 - Martin Blaser - Save Our Endangered Germs
In this podcast, I speak to Martin Blaser, Frederick H. King Professor of Internal Medicine and Chairman of the Department of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology at the New York School of Medicine…
MTS63 - Jeff Gralnick - I Sing the Microbe Electric
All life hums with electricity, from our heartbeats to the electrons that flow to the oxygen we breathe.But some bacteria are electricians par excellence, generating electric currents in the soil a…
MTS62 - Jessica Green - The Living Air
In this podcast I talk to Jessica Green of the University of Oregon about aerobiology: the science of life in the air.
We live in an invisible ocean of life, with millions of microbes swarming aroun…
MTS61 - Charles Bamforth - Beer: Eight thousand years of biotechnology (39.5 min.)
In this podcast, I talk to Charles Bamforth of the University of California, Davis, about the surprisingly complex chemistry of beer, and the pivotal role microbes play in making it happen.
MTS60 - Thomas Scott - The Bone-Breaking Virus (29.5 min.)
In this podcast I talk to Thomas Scott of the University of California, Davis, about dengue fever, a disease that's on the rise. Spread by mosquitoes, it can make you feel as if your bones are bro…
MTS59 - Charles Ofria - Digital Life
In this podcast I talk to Charles Ofria, a computer scientist at Michigan State University.
Ofria and his colleagues have created a program called Avida in which digital organisms can multiply and…
MTS58 - David Baker - Crowdsourcing Biology
In this podcast I spoke to David Baker, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington. Baker and his colleagues study how proteins fold, taking on the complex shapes that make our …
MTS57 - Forest Rohwer - Curing the Corals
It never occurred to me that the human body and a coral reef have a lot in common--until I spoke to Forest Rohwer for this podcast. Rohwer is a microbiologist at San Diego State University, and he…
MTS56 - Susan Golden - Clocks for Life
In this podcast, I talk to Susan Golden, the co-director of the Center for Chronobiology at the University of California at San Diego.
We talked about Golden's research into time--in particular, h…
MTS55 - Nancy Moran - The Incredible Shrinking Microbe
How many genes can a species lose and still stay alive? It turns out, bacteria can lose just about all of them!
In this podcast, I talk to Nancy Moran of Yale University about her fascinating work …
MTS54 - Carl Bergstrom - The Mathematics of Microbes
MTS53 - Bonnie Bassler - The Bacterial Wiretap
In this podcast I talk to Bonnie Bassler, a professor at Princeton and the president-elect of the American Society for Microbiology.
Bassler studies the conversations that bacteria have, using chemic…
MTS52 - Mitchell Sogin - Expeditions to the Rare Biosphere
In this podcast, I talk to Mitchell Sogin, the Director of the Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Wood's Hole, Massachu…
MTS51- James Liao - Turning Microbes into Fuel Refineries
In this podcast I talk to James Liao, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA. I spoke to Dr. Liao about his research into engineering microbes to make fue…
MTS50 - R. Ford Denison - Darwin on the Farm
In this podcast, I talk to R. Ford Denison of the University of Minnesota. Denison is an evolutionary biologist who's interested in how to make agriculture better. The ways in which plants thrive…