Dec. 5, 2023: Exciting news: the Yang lab welcomes Ghazal Soleymani as a new PhD student from the MCB program!
Dec. 4, 2023: Yang lab collaboration with Dr. Bahareh Behkam in mechanical engineering lands NSF funding.
Nov. 3-4, 2023: Megan attended the ASM Virginia Branching meeting and received a travel award for the meeting. Congrats!
August 3, 2023: Two big milestones to celebrate.
- Jay Ramos successfully defended their MS thesis. Congrats to Jay for a huge career accomplishment!
- Keane‘s paper on the interactions of M. xanthus PilB with c-di-GMP is accepted for publication by Journal of Bacteriology! All in all, Keane has FIVE first-author publications from his work in the Yang lab. Congrats to Dr. Keane Dye, a job well done! Link: https://doi.org/10.1128/jb.00221-23
July 31, 2023: We welcome Dr. Marilena Aquino de Muro as the newest Yang lab member!
July 28, 2023: Megan presented a poster on her summer research at 2023 Summer research Symposium at Virginia Tech.

June & July, 2023: Zhaomin gave talks at Myxo 2023 in Princeton, NJ and the Gordon Research Conference on Microbial Adhesion and Signal Transduction in Newport RI this summer.
June 23, 2023: The Commonwealth Health Research Board (CHRB) awarded a 2-year research grant to Drs. Yang and Santos (Chemistry) for an antivirulence project starting on July 1, 2023.
May 11, 2023: There is a postdoc opening in the lab. Please see here for https://jobs.chronicle.com/job/37449536 for the application portal and more information.
May 9, 2023: This is the end of an era for the Yang lab as Dr. Keane Dye moves to his next adventure as a postdoc fellow at USU School of Medicine. Best of luck to Keane!
April 28, 2023: Megan presenting her poster at the Dennis Dean Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship Conference.
April 21, 2023: Congrats are in order!
- Megan receives the David Lyerly Summer Fellowship.
- Keane receives the best poster prize at the VTCDD poster session.
March 20, 2023: A few updates.
- Tori Shimozono joined the lab as a graduate student in Fall, 2022. Tori was an undergraduate researcher in the lab from Summer, 2021 to Spring, 2022. She worked in the lab in the summer of 2022.
- Megan O’Hara joined as an undergraduate student researcher in the summer of 2022.
- Rachel Machie & Stephanie Strickland joined the lab as undergraduate student researchers in Spring, 2023.
November 15, 2022: Our paper on PilB inhibitors as antivirulence compounds is published in Microbiology Spectrum. Keane’s 4th publication as a first author. Congrats!
Sept 21, 2022: CeZAP awards an interdisciplinary team building piolet grant to a group of Virginia Tech scientists lead by Prof. Yang. The co-PIs are Dr. Webster Santos (Chemistry), Dr. Mike Klemba (Chemistry), Dr. Coy Allen (Pathobiology) and Dr. Florian Schubot (Biological Sciences).
May 4, 2022: Congrats to Dr. Keane Dye for a successful dissertation defense today! Great job! Keane will stay on as a postdoc in the Yang lab.
April 29, 2022: Keane’s paper on M. xanthus biofilm is published in Frontiers in Microbiology! Congrats, Keane!
February 5, 2022: Keane gave an excellent talk as one of four invited graduate student speakers at Biological Sciences Research Day!
June 21, 2021: Yang and Brown collaboration receives Dean’s Discovery Fund.
June 8, 2021: Congrats to Keane for being awarded the Lewis Edward Goyette Fellowship for Summer, 2021 from Biological Sciences!
March 3, 2021: The lab’s first paper on drug discovery is published. See here: High-Throughput Screen for Inhibitors of the Type IV Pilus Assembly ATPase PilB
Aug. 24, 2020: Jay Ramos joins the Yang Lab as a graduate student. Welcome!
June 3, 2020: Congrats to Keane for being awarded the Liberati Scholarship for the 2020-2021 academic year from the Department of Biological Sciences.
May 7, 2020: Congratulations to Keane for being awarded a GSDA fellowship for Fall, 2020 from Graduate School through the College of Sciences!
Jan. 7, 2020: Dr. Yang was invited to join the editorial board of Frontiers in Microbiology as an Associate Editor.
Dec. 23, 2019: The paper ” Cyclic-di-GMP and ADP bind to separate domains of PilB as mutual allosteric effectors” by Keane Dye is accepted for publication in Biochemical Journal (Link). Congrats to Keane, Hohoho 🙂 !
Dec. 20, 2019: Manuscript by Sarah Riggs-Shute on the construction and use of a transposon in mycobacteria for the isolation of conditional mutants is accepted for publication in Frontiers in Microbiology (Link). Congrats to Sarah and Happy Holidays!
Dec. 4, 2019: Congrats to Keane Dye for passing his prelim exam!
Aug. 20, 2019: It is official! The Yang lab receives $1 M funding from NSF for a biofilm/motility project.
April 8, 2019: Andreas Sukmana receives the 2019 William Preston Master’s Thesis Award in STEM from Graduate School. Congratulations!