Clostridioides difficile  Research Team

​University of South Florida

 Soumyadeep Chakraborty,  PhD 

Rajath Talpady, BS​​

 Maryam with a B.Sc. in Physiology is an research assistant, working on antigen expression and purification as well as animal immunizations.

 Dr. Wang is a Research Assistant Professor. He has a strong background in microbiology, molecular biology, protein expression and purification, infectious diseases with a focus on pathogenesis of C. difficile, animal models of C. difficile infection (CDI) and development of vaccines against CDI.  He has published more than 50 scientific papers in peer reviewed journals. ​

Brianna Mumford, BS​​

Ethan Wasserman​​

Maryam Yusuph​​

Veronica Gosnell, BS 

​​​​​​​​​​​Lauren Lapeter, BS

Veronica is  a Graduate student in the Bioinformatics & Computational Biology Program, and works on the development of epitope-based vaccines and novel phage endolysins targeting C. difficile.

Junling Qin, PhD

Dr. Chakraborty is a Scientific Researcher and Research Associate. He has a strong background in molecular microbiology, molecular biology, protein engineering and expression with a recent focus on the pathogenesis of C. difficile and animal models of C. difficile infection. He was an Assistant Professor and the Department Head from 2018 to 2020 in the Department of Biotechnology & Bioinformatics, NIIT University, India. 

 Brianna is a Graduate student in the Biotechnology program at USF and works on vaccine development against C. difficile infection.  

 Adrit is an undergraduate student from the Judy Genshaft Honors Colllege - USF with a major in Biomedical Sciences in the 7-year accelerated BS/MD program from honor college, and  works on vaccine development using reverse vaccinology. 

Team

Dr. Sun is a tenured professor with early promotion in the Department of Molecular Medicine at the Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida (USF). He holds affiliation appointments in the Department of Internal Medicine, Department of Molecular Bioscience, Department of Chemistry at USF, and USF Genomics. He obtained his Ph.D. in Natural Sciences (magna cum laude) from the University of Kiel, Germany, followed by postdoctoral training in Molecular Microbiology and Biochemistry at Brown University, USA.  Dr. Sun's research focuses on microbial pathogenesis and host-pathogen interactions, with a particular emphasis on Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) pathogenesis and the development of novel therapeutics, including vaccines, to prevent and treat C. difficile infection (CDI). He is nationally and internationally recognized for his contributions to vaccine / therapeutic development against CDI as well as the understanding of C. difficile pathogenesis. His work has been continuously funded by the NIH since 2012. He has actively served NIH study section panels, including as chair. Additionally, he is an Associate Editor for Microbiological Research, Molecular Medicine, and Frontiers in Immunology, and serves on the editorial boards of Infection and Immunity and Applied and Environmental Microbiology. He received the “Tufts Institute for Innovation Inaugural Award” in 2014, the “Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award” in 2018, and the “Excellence in Innovation Award” in 2020 at USF. He also chaired the Research Committee at the USF College of Medicine from 2019 to 2020. Since 2021, he has served as President, Vice President, Secretary, and Executive Committee member of the USF Chapter of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), USA. In 2025, he was elected to be the “Senior Member” of NAI. He enjoys music, workout, and cuisines from different cultures during spare time.  ​                                                                                     

              Dr Sun profile:     //health.usf.edu/medicine/molecularmedicine/faculty/sun5                               https://health.usf.edu/publichealth/ghidr/genomics/researchers/xingmin-sun

Lubem Agbendeh, MS

  Lubem is a PhD student and is working on vaccine development against C. difficile infection using reverse vaccinology. 

Adrit Roy​​

 Xingmin Sun,  PhD (Principal Investigator) 

E-mail: sun5@usf.edu

 Rajath is a Graduate student in the Bioinformatics & Computational Biology program at USF and works on vaccine development against C. difficile infection using reverse vaccinology.  


  Ethan is an undergraduate student with a major in Biomedical Engineering. He works on vaccine prediction.

 Shaohui Wang, PhD 

  Dr. Tomatsidou is a Research Associate with strong expertise in molecular microbiology, molecular biology and animal models of infectious diseases. He focuses on the functions of the surface layer components of C. difficile using cutting-edge technologies.