Aleeza Gerstein

Aleeza is cross-appointed between the departments of Microbiology and Statistics at the University of Manitoba. Before moving back to her hometown for a faculty position, Aleeza conducted her undergraduate in Ecology & Evolution at The University of Western Ontario in London Ontario. This was followed by MSc and PhD degrees in the Zoology Department at The University of British Columbia, where she studied evolutionary genetics using Saccharomyces cerevisiae and then was an NSERC, Azrieli and Banting Postdoctoral Fellows at Tel Aviv University and The University of Minnesota, where she began studying human fungal pathogens. The research in her lab applies evolutionary principles and computational and statistical methods to understand the factors that influence how and why fungal populations evolve and to try and minimize the acquisition of drug resistance and recurrent infection from human fungal pathogens. Her lab works with local clinicians to characterize local isolates to identify when and why different relatedness patterns are observed in different infection contexts and among different species. She has a particular focus on recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis (recurrent yeast infections), with a goal of conducting transdisciplinary studies to understand the biological basis of recurrence alongside the lived experiences and barriers to care for people with this chronic condition.