Holly-brooklynbridge43park.png

HOLLY BIK, Ph.D.

principal investigator

Dr. Holly Bik is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia (with at joint appointment in the Institute of Bioinformatics). She obtained her Ph.D. in molecular phylogenetics at University of Southampton, UK (working with John Lambshead at the Natural History Museum, London, in conjunction with the UK National Oceanography Center). She completed postdoctoral appointments with Kelley Thomas at the University of New Hampshire and Jonathan Eisen at the University of California–Davis. In 2014 she was awarded a Bioinformatics Fellowship at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Aside from research, Holly is heavily involved in science communication and social media, serving as Associate Editor for the popular marine blog Deep-Sea News and maintaining an active presence on Twitter (@hollybik). She has co-authored a number of peer-reviewed articles on the use of social media and online tools in academia, including “An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists” in PLoS Biology and “Ten Simple Rules for Effective Online Outreach” in PLoS Computational Biology.

Mirayana.jpg

Mirayana Marcelino Barros

Graduate Student

Mirayana Marcelino Barros is a Ph.D. student is Marine Sciences Program at UGA. Her research interests are focused in the biodiversity, evolution and ecology of marine meiofauna, with emphasis on free-living nematodes. During undergraduate program she worked on the ecology of marine benthic meio-and macrofauna in diverse ecosystems including coastline shores, estuaries, and coastal lagoons. Using these organisms as “bioindicators” to evaluate changes on the benthic communities in response to both natural and anthropogenic disturbance events. For her MSc., Mirayana’s research focused on the ecology of marine nematodes in the deep-sea areas of the Gulf of Mexico. She aimed to generate a baseline of the nematode/meiofauna communities from that region that could be used as basis to understand changes in this environment, particularly due to anthropogenic activities (e.g. BP oil spill in 2010). During her Ph.D. program Mirayana propose to develop a research program focusing on the global biodiversity of marine nematodes and incorporating aspects of their ecology, phylogeny, and systematics. Her research aims to integrate classical taxonomy and high-throughput sequencing methods, using a combination of morphological and molecular approaches to inventory the diversity of marine nematodes and to advance our understanding of their ecology, biogeography, and phylogeny.

Hannah Budroe

Graduate Student

Hannah Budroe is a Ph.D. student in the Marine Sciences Graduate Program at UGA. Her current research interests are focused on developing computational workflows for analyzing benthic environmental DNA (eDNA) datasets from deep-sea and shallow water habitats worldwide. She also has a strong interest in science communication and outreach activities, including developing Pokemon-style trading cards focused on diverse ocean animal species large and small.

Min Khant Han

Graduate Student

Min Khant Han is a Ph.D. student in the Marine Sciences Graduate Program at UGA. His current research interests are focused on nematode-bacterial symbioses, including developing FISH probes for visualizing the location of symbiont taxa within/outside the body of marine nematodes

Simone Brito de Jesus

Graduate Student

Simone Brito de Jesus is a Ph.D. student in the Marine Sciences Graduate Program at UGA. Her current research interests are focused on marine nematode taxonomy and molecular phylogenetics, with a particular focus on benthic fauna in deep-sea and Antarctic habitats. She is also carrying out formal taxonomic descriptions of new deep-sea nematode species, in collaboration with Oleksandr Holovachov at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.

  • Email: Simone.BritodeJesus@uga.edu

  • LinkedIn Profile

  • Curriculum Vitae - PDF Download

Anna Miller

Graduate Student

Anna Miller is a Ph.D. student in the Microbiology Graduate Program at UGA. Her current research interests are focused on nematode-bacterial symbioses.

  • Email: anna.miller2@uga.edu

  • LinkedIn Profile

  • Curriculum Vitae - PDF Download

Sarah Hargadon

undergraduate researcher

Sarah Hargadon is an undergraduate student at UGA and double majoring in Biology and Ocean Science. Her current research interests are focused on bioinformatic analysis of nematode-bacterial symbioses.

  • Email: Sarah.Hargadon@uga.edu

Madeline Shell

undergraduate researcher

Madeline Shell is an undergraduate student at UGA and double majoring in Music and Biology. Her current research interests are focused on benthic eDNA datasets and 18S rRNA metabarcoding data analysis.

  • Email: Madeline.Shell@uga.edu

Cella Magliano

undergraduate researcher

Madeline Shell is an undergraduate student at UGA and is a Marine Biology major. Her current research interests are focused on bioinformatic analysis of nematode-bacterial symbioses.

  • Email: Cella.Magliano@uga.edu

Sophie Kelley

undergraduate researcher

Sophie Kelley is an undergraduate student at UGA and is an Ocean Sciences major. Her current research interests are focused on molecular wet lab protocols and bioinformatic data analysis.

  • Email: Sophie.Kelley@uga.edu

Former Bik Lab Members

Alejandro De Santiago (undergraduate researcher at UC Riverside 2017-2019; graduate student at UGA 2020-2025; postdoctoral researcher at UGA 2025-2026) - graduated with a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from UGA; now a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Symbiosis at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology

Paloma Carignano (undergraduate researcher, 2024-2026)

Tiago José Pereira (postdoctoral researcher, 2017-2025) - now an Assistant Professor at Kennesaw State University

Hunter Powell (graduate student at UGA, 2021-2025 - co-supervised with Marc Frischer) - graduated with an MS in Marine Science from UGA

Lekeah Durden (UGA FFIRE postdoctoral researcher, 2024-2025)

Gabriel Serrano (undergraduate researcher and at UGA 2024-2025; summer bioinformatics internship 2025) - now a graduate student in machine learning and computational biology at Clemson University

Clay Bibby (summer internship at UGA, 2025) - now a graduate student in the lab of Kevin Kocot at the University of Alabama

Jalyn Brown (summer NSF REU student at UGA, 2025)

Sierra Bartlett (graduate student at UGA, 2021-2025 - co-supervised with Patricia Yager) - graduated with an MS in Marine Science from UGA, now a research technician at Duke University

Jenna Brown (undergraduate researcher at UGA, 2022-2023, lab technician 2023-2024)

Kira Davis (undergraduate researcher at UGA, 2022-2023)

Jalen Scott (summer NSF REU student at UGA, 2022)

Taruna Schuelke (Bioinformatician and Lab Manager at UC Riverside, 2016-2018) - graduated with a Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara, now an Environmental Biologist for the city of Ventura, CA

Hannah Kissinger (graduate student at UC Riverside and UGA, 2017-2020)

Patricia Holt-Torres (graduate student at UC Riverside, 2017-2019)

Samantha Kuong (SALSA summer undergraduate intern at UC Riverside, 2019)

Christian Udealor (undergraduate researcher at UC Riverside, 2018-2019)

Vanessa Guzman (undergraduate researcher at UC Riverside, 2017-2018)

Amy Hodges (SALSA summer undergraduate intern at UC Riverside, 2017)