Ryan Hesse

I’m Ryan Hesse, a PhD student working for Dr. Liz Dinsdale in the Flinders Accelerator for Microbiome Exploration. I did my bachelor’s degree in Marine Biology at Long Beach State University, where I studied the interactions between giant kelp and their epifaunal communities and the competitive interactions between fire corals and gorgonian soft corals. I then did a master’s degree with Dr. Dinsdale at San Diego State University where I focused on the epidermal viromes of carcharhinid sharks. My current work is centered on expanding that shark virome project to include the epidermal microbiome of those sharks, the phage-microbe interactions that occur in their epidermal mucus, and how those dynamics vary over time.