The Department of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences offers a variety of graduate degree programs. For the highly qualified student, a Ph.D. program in Microbiology is available. Also available is a thesis program leading to the M.S. as well as a non-thesis option, the Master of Professional Studies, designed for professionals who wish to upgrade their knowledge or skills.

Prerequisites for admission include a bachelor’s degree in microbiology or other biological science with undergraduate work in organic chemistry, biochemistry, mathematics, and physics.

Curricula are planned to suit the interests and needs of the individual student and to provide a strong background in microbiology and molecular biology.

Teaching and research assistantships are available in various fields of microbiology.

The Department of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences is housed in Hitchner Hall, which is well equipped to do modern research in biochemistry, bacteriology, virology, molecular biology, genomics, bioinformatics, and immunology. Equipment available for research includes ultracentrifuges, Biotek microplate readers, LICOR CLX, Nanodrop, luminometers, qPCR instruments, liquid scintillation radioisotope counters, high speed refrigerated centrifuges, biohazard chambers, tissue culture facilities, flow cytometers, electrophoresis equipment, phase, confocal, and fluorescent microscopes, and transmission and scanning electron microscopes. Hitchner Hall has an excellent zebrafish facility on site. Additional facilities are available on campus for holding and breeding small animals. Faculty members are actively involved in research that is supported at the federal level. Students admitted to the graduate program in Biochemistry may also carry out their research with faculty listed under Microbiology in this catalog, in a number of laboratories in other departments at the University, or through cooperative institutional arrangements such as those at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory,  the Maine Medical Center Research Institute in Portland, and others . (In addition to the University of Maine-based faculty listed below, several faculty at external cooperating institutions  mentor research students in this degree program.)

 

Graduate Faculty

Suzanne Angeli, Ph.D. (University of California, San Francisco, 2010) Assistant Professor.  Caenorhabditis elegans to study the biological processes of aging and mitochondrial function.

Joshua B. Kelley, Ph.D. (University of Virginia, 2008) Associate Professor. Spatio-temporal regulation of G-proteins in receptor mediated gradient tracking using microfluidics and computational cell biology approaches.

Benjamin L. King, Ph.D. (University of Maine, 2016) Associate Professor. Bioinformatics and Systems Biology of Stress Responses.

Melissa S. Maginnis, Ph.D. (Vanderbilt, 2007) Associate Professor. Virus-host cell interactions that regulate JC Polyomavirus infection and pathogenesis.

Sally Molloy, Ph.D. (University of Maine, 2007) Associate Professor. Genomics and Microbiology.

Melody N. Neely, Ph.D. (University of Michigan School of Medicine, 1998) Chair and Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator. Host-pathogen interactions, with focus on Streptococcus.

Robert T. Wheeler, PhD (Stanford, 2000) Associate Professor. Genetics, genomics, biochemistry and cell biology of fungal pathogens with mammalian hosts.