Isabella Gamez

Since middle school, I’ve held a bit of a morbid curiosity surrounding infectious diseases and how they move through populations. This drove me to UNC-Chapel Hill for my undergraduate degree, where I received my BSPH in Biostatistics and BA in Studio Art. While at UNC, I studied phase variation and second messenger signaling in C. difficile. My senior year, I completed an honors thesis investigating the role of c-di-AMP in C. difficile using RNA-seq data. After graduation, I worked as a post-baccalaureate fellow at the NIEHS studying the impact of the surrounding environment on the household microbiome. Now, as an MPH student, I hope to learn more about how sequencing and genomic epidemiology can be used to answer questions about vector borne diseases, their transmission, and their ecology. 


Outside of the lab, I enjoy making disease themed art, long walks in the woods, playing DnD, and other various nerdy activities.