The Karstens lab members have continued to make progress towards wrapping up their studies in 2023. DMICE BCB Masters students Matt Hammer and Alex Rouhier both completed their master theses. Biomedical Engineering student Kate Bowie, PhD successfully defended her dissertation.
Matt Hammer’s thesis Evaluation of Tools for Functional Inference in the Pediatric Gut Microbiome evaluated how well functional prediction tools worked on the pediatric gut microbiome data. Alex Rouhier’s thesis “Evaluating microshade color palette accessibility for color vision deficiency” explored how well the microshades color palette improves accessibility for people with color blindness.
Kate’s dissertation “Investigating the Human Microbiome in Prostate Health and Disease: Examining Low-microbial Biomass Human Samples” explored how the microbiome could inform on prostate disease. She rigorously evaluated the blood microbiome as a potential biomarker for prostate cancer in addition to completing the largest male urobiome study to date. This work will set the stage for future studies.