Claire Rinehart

Claire Rinehart serves as a Professor in the Department of Biology at Western Kentucky University and is a core instructor in the HHMI Science Education Alliance-Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science (SEA-PHAGES) program. She has taught bioinformatics and phage genomics courses continuously from 2015 through 2022, directing both in silico genome annotation and in situ phage discovery curricula.

Her research concentrates on phage genomics and bioinformatics, utilizing bacterial hosts including Mycobacterium smegmatis, Microbacterium foliorum, Arthrobacter sp., and Gordonia terrae. She develops undergraduate research experiences focused on phage genome annotation, evolutionary analysis, and microbiological characterization, integrating computational biology with wet-lab discovery to advance understanding of viral diversity. Her work bridges microbiology, computational biology, and science education.

No scientific awards were documented in the provided institutional records.

Professor Rinehart has mentored over 300 undergraduate students across 10+ course sections since 2015, with class sizes ranging from 17 to 43 students annually. She directs comprehensive research experiences where students annotate phage genomes, conduct comparative analyses, and present findings through formal poster sessions. Her courses typically combine 2-4 weekly meetings with 2-6 hours of integrated lecture-lab work, emphasizing hands-on genomics research for freshmen through seniors.

She operates within the SEA-PHAGES national network, contributing to collaborative phage genomics education frameworks. Her work involves coordinating course sections that feed into the program's centralized research pipeline, utilizing resources like PhagesDB and the Genome Exchange. She has collaborated with colleagues such as Rodney King on course instruction, advancing the program's mission of undergraduate-driven genomic discovery.