Carrie Cowardin, PhD

Carrie A. Cowardin, Ph.D. received both her B.S. (Biology, 2010) and Ph.D. (Microbiology, 2015) from the University of Virginia. As a graduate student studying the intestinal immune response to Clostridium difficile infection, she was fascinated by the complex immune and bacterial environment of the gut. This work fostered a deep interest in understanding how gut microbial communities influence host health, and lead to her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Jeffrey Gordon at Washington University in St. Louis. There, Dr. Cowardin investigated the relationship between diet and gut microbes in the context of childhood growth stunting, and identified mechanisms by which a component of healthy breast milk promotes bone growth in early life. She returned to UVA in the summer of 2020 to start her own lab in the Child Health Research Center as part of TUMI.

Lab Website: https://www.cowardinlab.com/

Lab Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ccowardin