Post Doc Researchers

  • Dr. Prabhat Tomar
    • Dr. Tomar joined the lab as a faculty research assistant in Fall 2022 as part of a collaboration with HP, Inc to develop a digital microfluidic device for synthetic biology applications. He worked on developing protocols and provided testing and critical feedback on chip design and operation to improve the digital microfluidics chip.
  • Dr. Khaled Almabruk
    • Dr. Almabruk obtained his Ph.D. from Dr. Mahmud's lab at Oregon State University in Oct. 2016. He joined the Philmus lab in Dec. 2016. He focused on two projects during his tenure including isolating natural products that we have identified using our genome mining method. He was also involved in investigating the biosynthesis of the triazine natural product, toxoflavin. Dr. Almabruk is now a Principal investigator and Scientist at Gadusol Labs (link) a startup company in Corvallis.
  • Dr. Patrick Videau
    • Dr. Videau was a postdoctoral researcher in the Philmus lab 2014-2016 and focused on establishing the heterologous expression system for cyanobacterial natural products using Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 as the host. Dr. Videau is now an assistant professor at Southern Oregon University (link).

Graduate Students

  • Daniel Back | Ph.D., Pharmaceutical Sciences
    • Daniel joined the lab in Spring 2019 and has a deep interest in coupling synthetic methods and technique development with natural product research. Daniel worked on ruthenium click chemistry to label alkyne natural products to aid in compound identification and the biosynthesis of alkyne natural products. Daniel graduated from the program in August of 2024.
  • Jessee Svoboda | Ph.D., Bioengineering
    • Jessee joined the lab in Spring 2019 and focused their research on development of technologies for and strain engineering of Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 for the study of cyanobacterial natural products. Jessee graduated from the lab in August of 2024.
  • Brenda Cisneros | M.S. student, Pharmaceutical Sciences
    • Brenda joined the lab in June 2018 and worked on the biosynthesis and heterologous expression of cyanobacterial natural products. She left the lab in Spring of 2019 to pursue her dream job.
  • James Cherry | M.S., Pharmaceutical Sciences
    • James joined the lab as a rotation student in June 2018. He focused on the biosynthesis of 1,2,4-triazine natural products and graduated with an M.S. degree in Spring 2019.
  • Jessie Eiting | M.S., Pharmaceutical Sciences
    • Jessie is a graduate of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, obtaining her Master's degree in Dec. 2016. Her research focus was developing Escherichia coli as a general host for the expression of cyanobacterial natural products.

Undergraduate Students

  • Jaclyn Vu
    • Ms. Vu was an honors college undergraduate student, whose research interests focused on applying machine learning algorithms for natural product research. She focused on developing machine learning algorithms to better predict the structure of natural products encoded in the genome of microorganisms. Since graduating OSU, she has been enrolled in the MS program in Data Science at Columbia University.
  • Savannah Justen
    • Ms. Justen was an undergraduate student in the lab and graduated with an Honor’s degree in 2019. Her research focused on the biosynthesis of the 1,2,4-triazine natural product toxoflavin. Since graduating, she has entered the OSU PharmD. program and will graduate in Spring 2025.
  • Linh Dinh 
    • Dr. Dinh was an undergraduate researcher that developed PCR based methods to mine bacterial genomes for the potential produce natural products based on self-resistance. After graduating from OSU she entered and graduated from the OSU PharmD. program
  • Kaitlyn Wells
    • Dr. Wells was a 4 year undergraduate researcher in the Philmus lab who focused on developing Escherichia coli as a general host for the expression of cyanobacterial natural products. She graduated from OSU in 2017 with an Honor's degree and has subsequently graduated from the OSU PharmD. program.
  • Andrew Senner
    • Mr. Senner was an undergraduate researcher who focused on the isolation of soil microorganisms and screening them for the production of bioactive natural products. He graduated from OSU in 2015.