Renee Dunbar

Renee Dunbar serves as a Lecturer at Connecticut State Community College's Northwestern campus, functioning as Primary Instructor for the General Biology course within the HHMI-funded SEA-PHAGES program (Science Education Alliance-Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science) for Fall 2025. She leads an in situ phage discovery and microbiology section with 16 freshmen students, utilizing Microbacterium foliorum as the host bacterium with weekly 3-hour laboratory sessions.

Her research and teaching focus centers on:

• Experimental bacteriophage isolation and characterization
• Genomic analysis of viral diversity
• Evolutionary mechanisms in microbial systems
• Authentic research integration in undergraduate curricula

Dr. Dunbar actively participates in the national SEA-PHAGES consortium, with upcoming engagements including the 2025 Phage Discovery Workshop (July 12-18, 2025) and 2026 SEA Symposium (April 24-26, 2026). No scientific awards were documented in available materials. Her educational initiatives emphasize hands-on genomic research training for entry-level biology students through structured phage discovery pipelines, though no graduate student advising or external grant funding details were specified in current records.