Julianne W. Ashby

Julianne is a staff research associate who received her B.S. in Molecular Biology from University of California, Merced. Before attending university, she worked as a laboratory technician at a biotech startup in the bay area called Taxon Biosciences (subsequently acquired by DuPont-Pioneer in 2015). At Taxon she worked on a team utilizing advances in the microbiome and genomics to discover naturally occurring consortia of microbes to increase agricultural productivity - from both the discovery phase to field trials. While attending UC Merced, she worked in the laboratory of Prof. Miriam Barlow as an undergraduate research assistant. Her project objective was to identify potential antibiotic resistance genes in samples from hospital patients diagnosed with specific infections using multiple molecular approaches. Julianne joined the Mack lab shortly after its start-up in 2018. Along with lab managerial duties, she runs all of the live cell imaging experiments. Outside of lab, Julianne is usually at the beach or perusing one of LA’s many markets.