Dr Jemila Kester
Jemila Caplan Kester graduated summa cum laude from The City College of The City University of New York with a BS in biology. For her postgraduate work, Jemila joined Prof Sarah Fortune’s lab at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she uncovered a novel role for proteolysis in the Mycobacterial cell cycle. After completing her PhD, Jemila was a Postdoctoral Associate in Prof Linda Griffith’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she contributed to the development of a human gut-microbiome-immune fluidic system (GuMI) capable of supporting both aerobic and anaerobic growth simultaneously. Her work on the GuMI revealed new details of microbiome-immune interdependence. After a brief postdoc with A/Prof Siouxsie Wiles at the University of Auckland, Jemila began her own lab at AUT. Her lab focuses on understanding how the microbes in our gut can be harnessed to improve immunity. During her more than 15 years at the bench, Jemila has won several awards and fellowships, including 10 years of support from the National Institutes of Health, grants from the National Science Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund. Outside of the lab, Jemila has participated in science education and community outreach since 2007, and she teaches yoga in her Mt Eden studio.