Jennifer Goff, PhD

Even if you have students in the audience, you have 0 rapport with them, so it can be hard to get buy-in for things that you would normally implement very successfully in your own classes (example: I did a case study at a demo and it was awkward with the demo audience but my students now LOVE them)

☝️this! I have not watched demos but having done them myself, I felt like things went more smoothly when I kept things simple. I found that faculty (often the main audience) were resistant to participating in a lot of activities but were fine with a lecture+small assessments scattered throughout.

Registration: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...

Present your research at the 2026 CNY Environmental Science & Studies Conference (March 27–28, SUNY ESF)! Student oral talks (10–12 min) & posters welcome. Free, interdisciplinary, and open regionally.

Registration deadline is March 6! There are still lots of spots open for student talks!

When your flight to DC for a meeting was cancelled due to blizzard but you are still deeply committed to hanging out with your postdoc lab bestie who will be at the meeting.

Georgie visits lab meeting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😻

Love making dreams come true at work! @hannahgreich.bsky.social

Proud of my winter community college interns for presenting on their research projects today! In just two weeks they accomplished a lot of new work!

The peak of my academic career has definitely been our local cheese shop sharing the ESF insta post about the cheese day I do in my class! 🧀🧀🧀

CNY ASM - Awards

⏰ Reminder: Peggy Cotter Travel Award apps due Feb 16!

We have 3 $1,650 travel awards for ASM Microbe 2026!

👩‍🔬 Early-career professionals (≤15 yrs from terminal degree)are eligible

📧 Apply: jegoff@esf.edu

🧬 ASM + CNY ASM membership are required

Learn more: sites.google.com/view/cnyasm/...

This Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program is funded by the National Science Foundation to create "points of entry" for students interested in research. Students apply from across the country to spend 10 weeks in Bozeman, Montana this summer (May 26, 2026 - August 1, 2026). Admitted students are paired with a faculty mentor, who serves as an advisor for a student's summer project. Each student receives a stipend ($7000 for 10 wks). Travel compensation, room, and board are also provided. Our program leverages MSU’s unique microbiology expertise, focusing specifically on microbes living with little or no oxygen (like those in the hot springs of nearby Yellowstone). Low oxygen microbes are essential to human and ecosystem health. They influence (or control) such processes as the breakdown of food in the GI tract, removal of toxins from our bodies and the environment, and production of greenhouse gases. They are also models for understanding the origins of life on this planet, and the potential for life on other planets. A key goal of our program is to recruit students from schools with limited research infrastructure. Being in Montana, a state with a vibrant Native American community, we are particularly interested in applications from students at tribal colleges. However, ANYONE with an interest in microbiology - or biology/science in general - can and should apply. If willing and able, please share/tweet/spread the word far and wide. Applications are due February 14, 2026. Full details can be found through our website http://www.montana.edu/mbi/reu/

Friends, please help spread the word about our microbiology REU program at Montana State University.
www.montana.edu/mbi/reu/

Each student receives a stipend ($7000 for 10 wks). Travel compensation, room, and board are also provided.

Details in the attached pic--Feb 14 deadline
🧫🧪🦠#microsky

Georgie says that you’re doing amazing!

⏰ Reminder: Peggy Cotter Travel Award apps due Feb 16!

CNY ASM is offering up to 3 awards ($1,650 each) for ASM Microbe 2026 (DC, June 4–7).

👩‍🔬 Early-career professionals (≤15 yrs from terminal degree)
📧 Apply: jegoff@esf.edu

🧬 ASM national + CNY ASM membership required (can do after applying)

The experimental work done here as primarily performed by my undergraduate mentee Konnor when I was at UGA. He also did the analysis and integration of the proteomics and RBTn-Seq data.

Using a combination of proteomics , metabolomics, and RB-TnSeq we worked out the details in this non-model organism to expand our understanding of acid tolerance mechanisms beyond enteric bacteria. 🧵

We found that glutamate biosynthesis was protective under acidic conditions despite the lack of a canonical glutamate decarboxylase system while BCAA biosynthesis was detrimental to growth under these same conditions. 🧵

This strain can carry out complete denitrification at pH below 6 but lacks your “traditional” acid tolerance genes in its genome. So we set out to examine how this strain acclimates to acidic conditions. 🧵

Contrasting effects of glutamate and branched-chain amino acid metabolism on acid tolerance in a Castellaniella isolate from acidic groundwater | Applied and Environmental Microbiology Nitrate pollution in groundwater is a major threat to both environmental and human health. This nitrate pollution can come from a variety of sources, including farm fertilizers, sewage, animal waste, ...

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

We have a new paper out that looks at metabolic adaptations to mildly acidic conditions in a denitrifier isolated from acidic, nitrate-contaminated groundwater. 🧵

The deadline for this is fast-approaching!

While we are flexible in the membership requirement (don't need to join to apply, but will need to join to receive the award), we encourage you to go ahead and join! It is $25 for full and $10 for student/postdoc membership.

myasm.asm.org/eweb/Dynamic...

Excited to share that you can now join the CNY ASM branch through the ASM national website: myasm.asm.org/eweb/Dynamic...

Remember, you don't need to be within the "official" zip codes to join (looking at our friends in Ithaca)!

These are all students who are SO smart and who are committed to careers in healthcare. But somehow we are failing them with basic public health education at the K-12 level and then it carries on in college. We can’t expect this to come from their families.

Today one of my pre med students (who also already works in a medical setting with vulnerable patients), was shocked when I explained that last spring’s Covid vaccine is probably not doing much for him now. He had no idea that new Covid and flu vaccines come out each fall. 🧵

Somehow we need to be better about vaccine education at the college level. I used to teach micro for nursing students and had several tell me they never understood the importance of vaccines until my class. These are students who were already working in medical settings with vulnerable patients. 🧵

I already feel so much less burnt out ☺️

SUNY did a study and found that faculty are all extremely burnt out! I had no idea!

dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/server/api/c...

A line grant showing new and competitive renewal awards made by NIH is fiscal year 2026 compared to 2021-2025. The line for fiscal year 2026 is very close to zero.

My (now) weekly update on 2026 NIH funding.

New and competitive renewal awards.

3 new awards (compared to ~100 expected based on recent years).

No new ICs... still just NIA, NINDS, NIDCD, and NIDCR.

1/2

I’ll leave the rest to the preprint but just share these pics from our field sampling for this work back in Nov 2024.

…that is until we looked beyond taxonomy to functional gene content! We found that Rx fire significantly shifts the population of genes involved in N-cycling, specifically those involved in nitrate reduction and denitrification.