Team
We are always recruiting motivated undergraduate students interested in mycology, zoonotic diseases, public health, genetics, and microbiology. Unless you are externally funded (see NSF GRFP), the Salazar-Hamm Lab is recruiting PhD students ​interested in pursuing a interdisciplinary degree in Biotechnology (see New Mexico Tech Biotechnology). Graduate students will be given significant independence in developing their research ideas, which allows the lab to tackle a diversity of questions, methods, and study systems, with a focus on fungi.
Current Lab Members
Charles Tetrault (He/his)
Charles Tetrault is a senior undergraduate biology major at New Mexico Tech. Before working in the Salazar-Hamm Lab, he worked in labs focused on ecotoxicology and environmental microbiology in the context of desert lichens and cave ecosystems. His major interest is in addressing societal shortcomings and the resulting challenges that arise within complex social and environmental systems by applying the tools and methodologies of interdisciplinary life sciences.​
Associate Lab Members
Luisa Zamora Chavez (she/they), Arizona State University
Luisa is a Master's student in Nate Upham's lab investigating how two aspects of wildlife biology influence rodent lung fungal communities: (1) phylogenetic relatedness of rodent host populations; and (2) habitat similarity over adjacent elevational biomes. She is determining these dynamics in rodents found in one of the Madrean Sky Islands, a set of highly biodiverse and isolated mountain ranges spanning the s southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico. Luisa's Master's thesis seeks to not only determine how the composition of wild rodent lung mycobiomes varies with host phylogeny and habitat, but also understand the dynamics of host reservoir co-evolution with certain fungal taxa, such as Coccidioides (the causative agent of Valley fever).
Laura Rodriguez (she/her), New Mexico Tech
Laura is a Ph.D. student in Earth and Environmental Science at New Mexico Tech, specializing in geobiology under the guidance of Dan Jones. She investigates active bacterial and archaeal populations, characterizes fungal communities, and examines the bioweathering potential in the sulfuric acid caves, particularly in the Frasassi Cave System in Italy. Using amplicon sequencing, metatranscriptomics, and culture-based approaches, her work links microbial activity to biogeochemical cycles and limestone dissolution. Her research aims to identify the microbes that inhabit these caves and understand how they might contribute to cave dissolution. These studies expand our knowledge of life in extreme environments and provide analogs for life on other planets.
