Robbi Ross

Robbi is from St. Louis, MO and got her B.S. in Biology from Maryville University of Saint Louis. She found her love for research during a genetics internship at Elemental Enzymes, an agricultural biotech company, in the summer after her freshman year of college. Soon after she became a Research Assistant studying bacterial genetics and got very interested in microbiology,  which prompted her to apply to graduate school to study host-pathogen interactions. At Notre Dame, after rotating in infectious disease, cancer, and neuroscience labs, she decided to stick with her love for infectious disease and immunology and joined the Santiago-Tirado lab in the spring of 2023. Her project focuses on understanding the relationship between C. neoformans and microglia, and why it seems that microglia is incapable of controlling the infection. When not in lab, you can find her reading, crocheting, eating ice cream, and playing with her dog Wrigley!

Publications:

• Ross RL, Arias-Parbul K, Douglass ZM, Adams KL, Santiago-Tirado FH. Use of a human immortalized microglia cell line to study recognition, phagocytosis, and intracellular survival of Cryptococcus neoformans. mSphere. 2026; 11(2):e0083825. doi: 10.1128/msphere.00838-25.
• Winski CJ, Stuckey PV, Marrufo AM, Agyei G, Ross RL, Urmi T, Chapman S, and Santiago-Tirado FH. Lack of an atypical PDR transporter generates an immunogenic Cryptococcus neoformans strain that drives a dysregulated and lethal immune response in murine lungs. mBio. 2025; 16(7):e0132125. doi: 10.1128/mbio.01321-25.
• Cohen DG, Heidenreich TM, Schorey JW, Ross JN, Hammers DE, Vu HM, Moran TE, Winski CJ, Stuckey PV, Ross RL, Yee EA, Santiago-Tirado FH, and Lee SW. Minimal domain peptides derived from enterocins exhibit potent antifungal activity. Front Fungal Biol. 2024; 5:1506315. doi: 10.3389/ffunb.2024.1506315.
• Arsenault Yee E*, Ross RL*, and Santiago-Tirado FH. Phenotypic characterization of HAM1, a novel mating regulator of the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans. Microbiol Spectr. 2024; 12(7):e0341923. doi: 10.1128/spectrum.03419-23. * = co-first authors.
• Ross RL and Santiago-Tirado FH. Advanced genetic techniques in fungal pathogen research. mSphere. 2024; 9(4):e0064323. doi: 10.1128/msphere.00643-23.