Alli Weis

Alli Weis a microbiologist and a mucosal immunologist.

She has always been allured by our biological world. She went to college at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon where she explored the wide world of turbulent tidal pools, forest invertebrates, and studied C. elegans cell biology and genetics. She then became enthralled with microbes and their global power to start and stop the universe, and pursued her Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis where she investigated the transmission and genomics of the pathogenic bacteria Campylobacter jejuni. In my pursuit to better understand host immunology, physiology, and gut microbial communities she has been elucidating the role of the gut microbiota during colon cancer tumorigenesis from both a protective and pathogenic standpoint during her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Utah in the lab of June Round. She hopes to start her own lab focused on how a commensal becomes a pathogen during homeostasis and disease, microbial ecology and evolution within the gut, and the immunological priming and mechanistic effects of different gut bacteria on our immune system. During her time in academia she has been an advocate for queer students. She was the president of the queer student group at Lewis and Clark for two years, was part of the queer student group at UC Davis, and at the University of Utah within the Huntsman Cancer Institute, She has been in leadership and helped HCI be recognized as a leader in LGBTQ+ healthcare equality by the Human Rights Campaign.