Dr. Melinda Grosser Seminar Title: “Nucleotide signaling and the genetic basis of stress survival in Staphylococcus aureus” Bio: Dr. Melinda Grosser is an Associate Professor of Biology at UNC Asheville, a primarily undergraduate institution. She joined the faculty in 2019 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California Berkeley, where she studied the pathogenesis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa during corneal infections. She earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology at UNC Chapel Hill, where she investigated metabolic and genetic adaptations of Staphylococcus aureus to the host innate immune response. At UNC Asheville, she teaches upper-level courses in Microbiology and Molecular Biology and directs a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) in which students build CRISPRi knockdown tools that feed directly into her research program. Her lab investigates how S. aureus survives host-derived stress, with a focus on nucleotide-based signaling molecules that coordinate stress adaptation and virulence.