Stephanie M. Karst

Professor & Associate Chair

Stephanie received her PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Missouri, Kansas City in 2000 studying host factor regulation of yeast retrotransposons. She then did her postdoctoral training at Washington University School of Medicine under the mentorship of Dr. Herbert "Skip" Virgin where she co-discovered the first murine norovirus. As a principal investigator at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (2005-2010) and the University of Florida (2011-present), her laboratory investigates the interplay between noroviruses, the host immune system, and intestinal microbiota with the long-term goal of contributing to development of effective therapeutics and preventative strategies. Since 2022, she also directs a NIH T32-funded Training Program in Basic Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (BMID) and a Summer Internship in Microbiology Research (SIMR) program for undergrads.

Marco Grodzki

Assistant Scientist

Marco joined the Karst lab in 2018 as a postdoctoral fellow and was promoted to Assistant Scientist in 2022.

Amy Peiper

MD/PhD student

Amy attained her BS from the University of Iowa in 2015, majoring in Biology with Honors, and then spent several years carrying out postbac research at Duke under the mentorship of Douglas Marchuk studying a rare vascular disease known as cerebral cavernous malformations. She began her MD/PhD training at the University of Florida in 2018 and joined the Karst lab for her doctoral studies in 2020. Amy's doctoral research investigates the interaction of noroviruses with the intestinal epithelium, specifically focused on understanding how these viruses breach the epithelial barrier during primary infection and viral shedding in the absence of replication inside the epithelial cell. She was appointed to the BMID T32 (2022-2023) and was awarded a NIAID F30 fellowship (2023-present). Amy's long-term plans are to be a successful physician-scientist practicing pediatric hospitalist medicine and conducting basic virology research.

Joyce C. Morales

PhD student

Joyce obtained her BS and MS degrees from UF.  She worked under the mentorship of Dr. Jeannine Brady at UF's College of Dentistry studying Streptococcus mutans extracellular membrane vesicles during her undergraduate and graduate studies before making the decision to pursue her doctorate degree.  She joined the Karst lab in the spring of 2021 and is elucidating the role of the bile acid receptor TGR5 in the antiviral immune response against MNV. (edited) 

Lufuno Phophi

Postdoctoral Fellow

Lufuno received her BS and MS in Microbiology and Biochemistry from University of Pretoria in 2016. She then carried out her doctoral studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville studying genomic structure and phylogeny of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius, receiving her PhD in 2023 before joining the Karst lab. Her studies now focus on the role of maternal and neonatal microbiota-derived metabolites in regulating  neonatal susceptibility to norovirus infection.

Zhengzheng Hu

Postdoctoral Fellow

Zhengzheng received her BS from Jilin Agricultural University in 2015, MS from Nanjing Agricultural University in 2018, and her PhD from China Agricultural University in 2022. Her graduate studies focused on host factors required for the replication of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus. Her studies as a postdoctoral fellow in the Karst lab focus on understanding the mechanism by which microbiota-derived bile acids amplify antiviral immune responses to norovirus infection, with the hope of developing novel antiviral therapies.

Quyen Nguyen

Undergraduate researcher

Quyen joined the Karst lab in 2020 and was mentored by Amy Peiper until 2023, when she began an independent project in the lab. She is currently investigating how noroviruses breach the intestinal epithelium in the absence of viral replication, testing the hypothesis that virulent strains are more efficiently transcytosed across this barrier due to immune antagonism strategies. Quyen was a SIMR Fellow (2022) and is currently a McNair Scholar (2022-2024), Duke Amgen Scholar (2023), and UFCOM University Scholar (2023-2024). Quyen plans to graduate from UF with a degree in Biochemistry and then pursue doctoral studies.

Meera Nair

Undergraduate researcher

Meera joined the Karst lab in 2021. She was a SIMR Fellow (2022).

Neha Iyer

Undergraduate researcher

Neha joined the Karst lab in 2021. She is a UFCOM University Scholar (2023-2024).

Nathan Roberts

Undergraduate researcher

Nathan joined the Karst lab in 2023.