Speaker Biography
Dr. Liz Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Molecular
Nutrition at Cornell University in the Division of Nutritional
Sciences. Her work focuses on understanding how sphingolipid
production by the gut microbiome influences host phenotypes, as well as how the
sphingolipid content of host diets affects the establishment of the
microbiome. She studied biology at Spelman College before pursuing a
Ph.D. investigating cell cycle transcriptomics at Princeton
University. Liz went on to study lipid-dependent host-microbe
interactions during her postdoctoral training in the lab of Ruth Ley before
joining the faculty at Cornell in 2018.
The Johnson Lab has expertise in genomic, lipidomic, and
molecular biology-based methods for understanding how bioactive
lipids shape host-microbe interactions. Current projects in the lab focus
on host-microbe molecule exchange and bioactive lipids in infant nutrition.