Jess Portillo

Jess received her B.S. in Community Health with a concentration in Clinical Science at George Mason University. As an undergraduate, she did research under Dr. Monique van Hoek’s Laboratory working with Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Burkholderia thailandensis. After graduating, Jess was a Postbaccalaureate IRTA Fellow at the NIH-NIAMS, investigating skin microbiome in Dr. Heidi Kong’s laboratory. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Department and a Duke BioCoRE Scholar. Jess is highly interested in understanding the microbiome and applying computational approaches to further explore host-microbe interactions. For fun, she likes to try new coffee shops and attend car meets!