People
Melanie Spero
Assistant Professor
she/her | mspero[at]uoregon.edu
Melanie grew up on the East Coast and earned a BS in Biotechnology from Rutgers University, where she was a member of the rowing team. She discovered her love for bacterial physiology while earning her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Dr. Tim Donohue’s lab. As a postdoc in Dianne Newman’s lab at Caltech, she began studying how pathogen physiology affects human health outcomes. She joined the University of Oregon faculty in 2021.
Alison Coluccio
Lab Manager / Research Technician
she/her | acolucci[at]uoregon.edu
A new transplant to Oregon, Alison has worked with sea urchins, frogs, plants, phage, bacteria and fungi in labs from central Mexico to coastal Maine. She loves doing cool stuff with DNA and taking pictures with 10μm scale bars. She's in love with the big trees of Oregon; her favorite local charismatic megaflora (so far) is the Coast Redwood.
Susannah Lawhorn
Graduate Student
she/her | slawhorn[at]uoregon.edu
Susannah earned a B.A. in biology from Bowdoin College in 2019. She then worked as a lab tech in the McFall-Ngai/Ruby labs studying the squid-vibrio symbiosis, where she discovered her love for bacterial physiology. She started at the University of Oregon in the Fall of 2023. She loves working in the Spero lab, where her current focus is biofilm formation in the obligate anaerobe, Finegoldia magna.
Francia Lopez Palomera
Graduate Student
she/her | fll[at]uoregon.edu
Francia was born and raised in Long Beach, California. She earned a BS in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics from UCLA. There, she worked with Dr. Thao Nguyen in an electrophysiology lab where she investigated cardiovascular research using a high fat diet rat model and a heart regeneration zebrafish model. After graduating, she worked at the biopharmaceutical company KitePharma a Gilead Company, where she worked as a microbiologist technician, aiding in the development and distribution of CAR T-cell therapies for cancer patients. After a few years, she returned to research, currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Oregon in the Institute of Molecular Biology. Outside of lab, Francia loves trees, the Willamette river, and her pug, Tofu.
Celine Lopez Padilla
Undergraduate Student Researcher
she/her | clopezpa[at]uoregon.edu
Celine is a fourth-year undergraduate student working towards a B.S. in Neuroscience with a minor in Biochemistry. After graduating from the University of Oregon, she aims to attend medical school and pursue a career as a physician. She is currently collaborating on a project investigating the combined use of chlorate and antibiotic treatments to kill P. aeruginosa under hypoxic conditions–with the goal of improving chronic infection treatment outcomes. Outside of the lab, she enjoys spending her time kayaking, baking, and hiking.
Zealon Gentry-Lear
Undergraduate Student Researcher
she/her | zmg[at]uoregon.edu
Zealon is a 4th year biology major and is also in the Clark Honors College. She has been working in the Spero lab for 1 year and her project uses Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a model bacterium to test novel therapeutics to treat chronic infections. More specifically, she explores the ability of different anti-pseudomonal antibiotics to synergize with the prodrug chlorate. Zealon has 3 pets (2 cats and a dog) and spends most of her time outside of the lab with them!