As a Ph.D. student at the Department of Animal and Avian Sciences, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Maryland, Hammed Ayansola is teasing apart the complex mechanisms involved in healing a damaged intestinal tract. His goal is to understand the chemical signals that certain cells in the intestines send to one another and how those signals trigger different steps in the gut healing process. After earning a Master’s degree in Agricultural Biochemistry and Nutrition at the University of Ibadan in his homeland of Nigeria, he spent a year in China learning the language before pursuing his second Master’s degree in Animal Nutrition and Feed Science. Afterward, he applied to his Ph.D. program at AGNR.

Edith J. Mayorga is a Postdoc Research Associate in the Nutritional and Environmental Physiology Laboratory in the Department of Animal Science at Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA. She received her BS in Animal Science from the National University of Colombia and her Master’s and Ph.D. in Animal Science at Iowa State University in 2017 and 2022. Her research efforts are primarily on heat stress and the impact of environmental hyperthermia on animal physiology, metabolism, and the immune system, with a particular focus on gastrointestinal health. She was a Postdoc Research Associate in the Gastrointestinal Health and Physiology Laboratory at the University of Maryland from July 2022 to July 2023.

Younggeon Jin is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Animal and Avian Sciences, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Maryland. He earned his DVM from the College of Veterinary Medicine, Jeju National University in 2009 and his Ph.D. in Comparative Biomedical Sciences from the College of Veterinary Medicine, NC State University in 2014. His expertise includes Gastrointestinal Health and Physiology; Intestinal Stem Cells, and Intestinal Mesenchymal Stromal Cells. His lab’s long-term research objective is to elucidate critical mechanisms by which the apical junctional complex contributes to intestinal epithelial homeostasis and pathogenesis of gastrointestinal disease.