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Meet Our Team
Brittany Belin, Ph.D. - Principal Investigator (she/her)
Brittany received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry and philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, where she pursued research with Dr. Holly Goodson, and completed her Ph.D. in biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, under the mentorship of Dr. Dyche Mullins. In 2015 she began to study plant-bacteria symbiosis as a post-doc in the laboratory of Dr. Dianne Newman at Caltech.
Brittany's independent laboratory opened at the Carnegie Institution for Science Department of Embryology, located on the Johns Hopkins University campus, in August 2020. Following the closure of the Embryology Department in the summer of 2026, Dr. Belin and her laboratory relocated to the University of Kentucky. She is interested in microbial cell biology and symbiosis in all of its forms.
Email: b [dot] belin [at] uky [dot] edu
Lucy White, B.A. - Research Technician / Lab Manager (she/her)
Lucy received a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Kenyon College, where she worked at the Brown Family Environmental Center coordinating environmental education programs and helping to maintain its gardens and landscapes. After graduating, she worked as a technician in Inga Meadows’s plant pathology lab at NC State University, where she studied cultural and chemical methods for disease control in vegetable and ornamental crops.
Lucy is working on improving genetic tools for Bradyrhizobia.
Email: lucy [dot] white [at] uky [dot] edu
Ann Deng, B.S. - Graduate Student (she/they)
Ann received her B.S. from UC Berkeley, where she majored in in Molecular and Cell Biology and Music and studied lyosome membranes in the Roberto Zoncu lab. She then worked as a technician studying RNA biology with Stephen Floor at UCSF before joining the CMDB program at Hopkins.
Ann is studying the molecular mechanisms of lipid transport in rhizobia.
Email: adeng13 [at] jhu [dot] edu
Lorna Mitchison-Field, B.S. - Graduate Student (they/them)
Lorna graduated from Mount Holyoke and spent their summers studying marine fungi at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA with Dr. Amy Gladfelter of UNC Chapel Hill. They then helped to develop cultivation and genetics protocols for the cnidarian-algal symbiosis, as a technician with Dr. John Pringle at Stanford and Dr. Phil Cleves at Carnegie.
Lorna is studying how lipids impact rhizobial membrane biophysics.
Email: lmitchi1 [at] jhu [dot] edu
Evan Schlesinger, B.S. - Graduate Student (he/him)
Evan received his B.S. in Biology at Muhlenberg College, where he studied the genetic basis of quiescent arrest in C. elegans. He then worked as a technician in the Miwa Lab at Lehigh University, studying modulators of nicotinic acetylcholine signaling in the mouse brain.
Evan is studying how rhizobial lipids affect membrane-mediated mechanosensation.
Email: eschles4 [at] jhu [dot] edu
Current & Former Lab Mascots
Zelda
Tony (RIP) & Montana
Purr!
Rio & Annie
Woof Woof!
Zeke (RIP)
Snort!
Don Brown's office frog
Ribbit!
Mitzi
Whine!
Uncomfortable silence!
Johnny Ringo
Meow!
Scarlett
Neyland
Sniff!
Hina
Woof!
Pant!
Buster Brown (RIP)
Yazo!
*quiet whir of flagellar rotation*
*crushing sound*
Lab Alumni
Former Postdocs:
Scott Carlew, Ph.D. (now Field Sales Rep, Mettler-Toledo Rainin)
Huiqiao Pan, PhD (now Staff Scientist, Michigan State)
Former PhD Student:
Matt Lubin, PhD (now Biosecurity Research Fellow, JHSPH)
Former Technicians:
Ashley Shim (now Consultant at Accenture)
Sarah Talamantez-Lyburn (now Research Associate at Exact Sciences)
Evan Lawrence (now PhD student in the Cleves lab, UC Berkeley)
Former Undergraduates:
Alex Dong (JHU; now PhD student at MIT)
Daniel Teixeira (JHU; now MD student at University of South Carolina)
Snigdha Jagarlapudi (UC Berkeley; now PhD student at Princeton)
Caroline Danielski (College of William & Mary; now PhD student at University of Virginia)
Arden Carvalho (REU; UMass Amherst)
Drew Tobin (REU; James Madison)
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