Katie Fuhrmeister

Experience includes facilitating a range of assessment activities including tutorials, lectures, and seminars, and participating in the assessment process to provide timely, effective, and appropriate feedback to students to support their learning.

Experience includes use of archaeological methods, acknowledgement of local cultures and respect to
prehistoriccultures, CRM compliance along with documentation and archiving of samples.

Experience includes compliance with lab safety protocols, knowledge of microbiology lab tests, managing laboratory information and inventory, and culturing microorganisms for quality control on designated Petri dishes.

The State Hygienic Laboratory (SHL) at the University of Iowa performs contracted testing for the Iowa Department of Public Health at Iowa's Human Health and Services (HHS) and serves as a reference lab for the state of Iowa. It uses Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI -ToF MS) to identify pathogenic bacteria and yeast isolates using the characteristic proteomic fingerprints. The identification score is a value between 0 and 3 that reflects the similarity between the sample and reference spectrum, where a score greater than or equal to 2.0 is accepted for species identification, scores from 1.7 to 1.99 are accepted as genus identification, and scores below 1.7 are unreliable. SHL uses MALD-ToF to confirm identification of cultured and submitted isolates before serotyping or whole genome sequencing using 16SSanger Sequencing for species identification. 16S Sequencing is costly, technical, and time intensive, so the SHL performs testing in batches when an average 6.8 bacterial or yeast isolates with scores between 1.7-1.99 are present.   SHL is reviewing MALDI-ToF scores for genus and species identification reliability to determine if the cutoff score for accepted species identification can be lowered below the 2.0 threshold recommended by the manufacturer. If the score is lowered below 2.0 out of 3.0, SHL and Iowa HHS and IDPH will reduce resource usage and turnaround time for species identification, which benefits the state of Iowa from a Public Health perspective by reducing patient-time interactions with broad-spectrum antimicrobials and reducing adverse reactions associated with prolonged antimicrobial usage. This will allow for a faster response time from IDPH in outbreak investigation, reduced cost burden, and free up funding to be spent elsewhere.