Cohort 3: TBD

Your year as a Phage Pathways Scholar

Cohort 3 meets live on Fridays about twice a month, with hands-on lab, field and genomics work in between. You join a small pod of scholars from different campuses, and everyone has a role.

March – May 2027

Foundations lecture series

Seven Friday lectures give every scholar, from first-year community college to PhD, the same base in microbiology, phage biology and lab skills.

Early June 2027

Phage isolation workshop

A week in the lab at San Francisco State University learning to isolate and grow phages, with scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Fall 2027

Genomics workshop at JGI

Annotate the genomes of the phages your cohort isolated, with the DOE Joint Genome Institute.

Field sampling

Collect your own environmental samples to search for new phages, guided by working field scientists.

June – August 2027

Sandia National Laboratories internship

Selected scholars spend 10 weeks doing full-time research at Sandia in Livermore, California, each with their own research question and a postdoctoral mentor.

All year, ending January 2028

Speaker talks and symposium

Fourteen talks from scientists in national labs, agencies, academia and industry, and a closing symposium where you present your research poster.

Who should apply, and what the year asks

Who should apply

Community college, four-year undergraduate, master's and PhD students
Students at partner campuses (San Francisco State, San Diego State, UC Davis, Skyline College) and other colleges, including community colleges
No phage experience needed. We look for curiosity, initiative and follow-through.
Enrolled or working in research for the full year, February 2027 to January 2028

What the year asks of you

Two live 75-minute sessions a month on Fridays (tentatively 2:00 p.m. Pacific), about 2 to 3 hours a week in total
In-person events: kickoff (February 26, 2027), sampling, the June wet-lab workshop, the fall JGI workshop and the January symposium
Attend at least 80% of live sessions, complete pre-work and surveys, present one speaker profile and a symposium poster
Stipend of up to $2,500, paid in three installments as you reach milestones

Key dates

Applications open

Apply on the Application page.

November 9, 2026

Mid-Nov and early Dec

Live info sessions on Zoom

Hear about the year from a Cohort 2 scholar and a Sandia intern, and ask questions. Dates coming soon.

December 15, 2026

(Application review in 2 rounds: Dec 15th; Jan 9th)

Application deadline

Including 1-2 letters of recommendation.

January 14 – 29, 2027

Interviews

20 minutes on Zoom.

By February 1, 2027

Offers sent

February 15, 2027

Cohort 3 begins

Orientation February 19; kickoff February 26 at 6:00 p.m.

Cohort 2 in 2026

Twenty-six scholars from eleven colleges and universities spent spring and summer 2026 in the field, in the lab and in conversation with working scientists.

26

scholars, including students from five community colleges

Phage Power Hour seminars with scientists from national labs, federal agencies, academia, industry and clinical labs

17 97%

of seminar responses said the talk helped them understand possible career paths

3

scholars completed summer research internships at Sandia National Laboratories

"It was really comforting to know that success isn't defined by perfection."

Cohort 2 scholar, seminar survey

Summer research at Sandia National Laboratories

In summer 2026, three Phage Pathways scholars spent 10 weeks as DOE RENEW interns at Sandia, each with their own research question and a postdoctoral mentor.

Technical talk at the Sandia Intern Symposium

Poster on phage rebooting in Bacillus subtilis

Engineering bacterial genomes. Built plasmids for Sandia's Integrase-on-Demand technology, which uses integrases from mobile genetic elements to insert genetic cargo into bacterial genomes. This work will be part of an upcoming publication.
Code for the bacterial mobiome. Wrote code to find the inverted repeats that mark the edges of insertion sequences, then ran it across a database of more than 3 million of them, which helped identify new insertion sequences.
Rebooting phages. Tested how well Sandia's phage rebooting pipeline works across 10 Bacillus subtilis phages, built PCR tests to detect each phage, and ran growth curves to improve the protocol.
Each intern gave a technical talk to the research team, presented a poster or talk at the Sandia Intern Symposium, and wrote a report on their summer work.

From the 2026 Sandia RENEW annual report by Catherine Mageeney, Ph.D.

Our partners

Phage Pathways is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Ready to apply for Cohort 3?

Questions? Email muryam.gourdet@sfsu.edu

Apply by December 15