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Thank you again to my special guests:
Cecilia Vargas obtained her BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from Rutgers University. Her MS research project involved Anaerobic Degradation of Chlorinated Hydrocarbons. After graduating, she worked as a research scientist at Johnson & Johnson for 9 years, then decided to return to Rutgers for a postdoctoral position with Max Häggblom. During that time, she researched the anaerobic dehalogenation process, looking at brominated and fluorinated compounds, as well as PCB’s and Dioxins. She eventually transitioned into several teaching positions (DeVry, Union County College, Rutgers), finishing her career as an Assistant Dean at Rutgers School of Engineering. She has been retired for 4 years. She enjoys time at the beach with her grandkids and has taken up paddleboarding and sourdough baking.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilia-vargas-91a74810/
Victoria Knight-Connoni is Director of Microbiology at Rapid Micro Biosystems. Her team is developing solutions that accelerate the detection of microbial contamination in the manufacture of biologics and pharmaceutical products. Victoria has spent her career in industrial microbiology working at several biotech companies focused on natural product discovery using microbes as the source of products. She has built and characterized large bacterial and fungal strain collections at multiple companies. Victoria holds a doctorate in microbiology from the University of New Hampshire and completed a postdoc at Rutgers University. https://www.linkedin.com/in/vknightconnoni/
Max Häggblom is a Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers University. An internationally recognized environmental microbiologist, his research explores the remarkable diversity, physiology, and ecology of microorganisms and their roles in transforming our environment. His work has a particular fascination with bacteria possessing “unusual appetites”—microbes capable of degrading environmental contaminants, metabolizing unusual chemicals, respiring rare metalloids, or thriving in extreme environments such as Arctic soils. Häggblom earned his Ph.D. in General Microbiology from the University of Helsinki and has spent decades studying microbes across soils, sediments, marine environments, and animal microbiomes. He is a Fellow of both the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and serves as Editor-in-Chief of FEMS Microbiology Ecology. His research highlights just how inventive—and surprising—the microbial world can be.
https://dbm.rutgers.edu/personnel/faculty/max-haggblom
