Margaret Hopson-Fernandes

Margaret Hopson-Fernandes is a Lecturer at Hillsborough Community College, serving as primary instructor for the SEA-PHAGES program since 2018. She teaches multiple sections of Biological Sciences labs (BSC 2010L/BSCL 2010) each semester, mentoring over 200 freshmen and sophomore students in phage discovery and genomics research using Microbacterium foliorum as host organism.

Her research expertise includes:

• Microbiology and bacteriophage biology
• Genomic analysis of phages
• Bioinformatics and computational genomics
• Undergraduate research pedagogy

She integrates wet lab and computational approaches across 8+ sections annually, including both in situ (4 hours/week) and in silico (2.5 hours/week) components. Dr. Hopson-Fernandes collaborates with Christine Logue as additional instructor and participates in national SEA workshops and symposia to advance her teaching methodologies.