MCDB honors graduate Eileen Brandes,  also an Academic All-American star back on the University of Michigan Field Hockey team in 2011, is currently profiled on MGoBlue, the UM athletics website. An undergraduate in MCDB Associate Professor Lyle Simmons lab, Eileen was the 2012 winner of the Christine Psujek Memorial Award for the best honors thesis in a biology major, and the 2012 winner of the Marshall Nirenberg Award in Life Sciences from the Honors College. After graduation she worked in the Simmons lab as a technician. She is now a second year medical student at Harvard Medical School.

In her years with the Simmons group, Eileen Brandes has co-authored two papers. She is second author in Lenhart, et al., 2014 Journal of Bacteriology 196 (15):2851-60 and third author in Tuson, et al. 2016 in press ChemPhysChem. Eileen's research helped define the role of the protein RecO in recruiting and loading RecA during recombination.

MGoBlue Story:  Q&A With Eileen Brandes