Organization
CUNY Brooklyn College (REMNet Team)
Members
Theodore Muth
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Extended Profile
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Employment Status4universityfacultytenured
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Websitehttp://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/academics/faculty/faculty_profile.jsp?faculty=105
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ReasonKeeping current in subject matter
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Biography
Theodore Muth is an associate professor in the Biology Department at CUNY Brooklyn College. Muth received his B.S. in Biology from Haverford College in 1993, and his Ph.D. in cell biology from the Yale University School of Medicine in 1998, where he studied protein targeting in epithelial and neuronal cells in the lab of Dr. Michael Caplan. Muth went on to receive postdoctoral training at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem studying bacterial multidrug resistance transporters, and a second postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, studying DNA transfer by the plant pathogen, A. tumefaciens. As an Associate Professor at Brooklyn College I have focussed on the study of urban microbial communities, and I have lead a national initiative to provide research experiences for undergraduate students in exploring complex microbiomes using metagenomic strategies and “big data” analysis tools. My lab’s research is at the leading edge of studies on urban microbial communities, and we were recently a part of the first team to publish on the diversity of subway microbiomes (Afshinnekoo et al., 2015), and the first lab to report on the diversity of soil bacterial communities in spatially and compositionally distinct soil horizons (Joyner et al., 2019, Huot et al., 2017). Complementing these research efforts, I worked to adapt protocols and develop training resources that have allowed microbiome research to be carried out by undergraduate students in laboratory courses (Introductory Microbiology Lab). The work that I initiated in the teaching labs at Brooklyn College has been funded by the NSF and provided support to microbiome research projects at institutions across the nation involving over 5,000 undergraduates, and has lead to the formation of the Research Experiences in Microbiomes Network (REMNet), that I am currently the director of.