User:Caledonia athome/Abigail A. Salyers

Abigail A. Salyers (1942 – 2013) was a microbiologist whose research focused on bacteria in the intestinal tract contributing to better understanding of antibiotic resistance and mobile genetic elements. She was awarded numerous teaching awards, an honorary degree from ETH Zurich and was a past president of the American Society for Microbiology.

Education
Despite almost being expelled from high school because she was pregnant, Salyers went on to receive her undergraduate degree in Mathematics in 1963 and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics in 1969 from George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

Career
Four years after starting her first academic position teaching physics at St. Mary’s College, she chose to switch her research to microbiology. Salyers joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1978, was made the first female tenured professor in Microbiology at Illinois in 1983 and a full professor in 1988. In 2004, she was named the G. William Arends Professor in Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Salyers studied bacteria which live in the human intestinal tract (Bacteroides) in particular with regard to their ability to harbor mobile antibiotic resistance genes and carbohydrate metabolism. She published over 200 articles.

Salyers was Co-Director of the Microbial Diversity Summer Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA for the summers of 1995-1999. She also was President of the 40,000 member American Society for Microbiology in 2001-2002. Her tenure overlapped with the 2001 anthrax attacks when she advised the US Postal service about the safety precautions.

Awards for research and teaching
2009 National Graduate Teacher Award in Microbiology.

Honorary Doctorate from ETH University in Zurich, Switzerland in 2001.

Pasteur Award for Research and Teaching, the All-Campus Award for Excellence in Teaching and Golden Apple Award (three times) for Medical School Teaching at the University of Illinois.

An endowed student scholarship for the Microbial Diversity Course was established in her name after her death.