Joshua Hall, Ph.D.

jdhall@med.unc.edu

• Department of Microbiology & Immunology

Education

• UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine
  Department of Microbiology & Immunology

Mentors

• Virginia Miller, Ph.D.

Biography

I grew up in the New River Valley of Virginia and as a student at the Southwest Virginia Governor's School I did my first real science experiment. For a school-wide science fair, I assessed whether vegetables or herbal remedies possessed antimicrobial properties.
Unknown to me at the time, this maiden inquiry would be the start of my microbiology career. Entering the College of William and Mary, my career goals were vague though my interests were broadly based in science. As a freshman, I participated in a seminar course on the topic of emerging diseases which piqued my interest in infectious disease and led me to pursue a major in Biology. I joined the lab of Mark Forsyth, a microbiologist studying /Helicobacter pylori /signaling and pathogenesis.

In the Biology department at William and Mary, a liberal arts university, there were no PhD students or postdocs, so undergraduates performed a significant portion of the lab work. Science surely happened at a slower pace there than at a large research university, however a certain energy and enthusiasm existed in that setting that I have not experienced elsewhere. Transitioning into a graduate school lab was smooth due to the degree of hands-on research available to me as an undergraduate. Likewise, I was thoroughly prepared for my graduate coursework by my undergraduate classes, taught exclusively by faculty who made teaching a priority in the career they had chosen.

Experiences as an undergraduate researcher led me to continue my education as a graduate student in the Microbiology and Immunology department at UNC Chapel Hill. I performed my doctoral research in Tom Kawula's lab where I studied how /Francisella/ /tularensis/ initiates infection in the lung following inhalation and how the bacterium interacts with the host immune system. Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow in Virginia Miller's lab studying mechanisms utilized by entero-pathogenic /Yersinia/ species to cause disease.

My personal experiences in an undergraduate lab significantly influenced my decision to pursue science as a career and impressed upon me the importance of undergraduate teaching and research. Professionally, I arrived where I am due to a mentor and university with a commitment to undergraduate science education and undergraduate research. Therefore, I feel a strong desire to pay forward my experiences to the next generation of undergraduates interested in science learning, exploring research, and potentially pursuing science as a career. Because of this, I'm excited to be a part of the SPIRE program which will provide a level of training and mentorship in teaching far beyond what could be expected with a traditional postdoc.