Colleen Knight

Colleen Knight serves as Chair and Associate Professor of Chemistry within the Natural Sciences division at the College of Coastal Georgia. She directs the SEA-PHAGES program, teaching BIOL 3500 with a focus on phage discovery and microbiology using Microbacterium foliorum as the host organism across multiple academic terms.

Her research centers on bacteriophage genomics and evolutionary biology, integrating wet-lab phage isolation with bioinformatics analysis. Through the HHMI-funded SEA-PHAGES initiative, she develops authentic undergraduate research experiences that bridge microbiology and genomic analysis, emphasizing hands-on discovery of novel phages and their evolutionary relationships.

As an educator, Knight has mentored 29 students since 2022 across three course iterations, with increasing enrollment from 6 to 15 students. Her Fall 2024 section features a 6-hour weekly commitment and collaboration with instructor Holly Nance, reflecting her dedication to scalable undergraduate research infrastructure in phage genomics.