Rate My Professor Laura Burrack

Laura Burrack serves as Associate Professor of Biology and Chair of the Biology Department at Gustavus Adolphus College. She received her B.A. from Macalester College in 2002 and her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University in 2008, where her doctoral research under Dr. Darren Higgins utilized molecular biology, genetics, and cell biology to identify host factors required for intracellular infection by Listeria monocytogenes. Following her graduate work, Burrack completed a postdoctoral fellowship from 2008 to 2013 in Dr. Judith Berman's laboratory at the University of Minnesota, developing Candida albicans as a model for chromosome segregation studies. She then held a term Assistant Professor position in Biology at Grinnell College from 2013 to 2015 before joining Gustavus Adolphus College as Assistant Professor in 2015 and advancing to Associate Professor.

Burrack's research examines the role of flexibility in chromosome segregation mechanisms, genome stability, microbial evolution under stress, and antifungal drug resistance, employing Candida albicans and Candida auris as models for aneuploidy and genetic changes observed in cancer cells. Her lab integrates microbiology, molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry, and cell biology techniques. She teaches Principles of Biology, Microbiology, and Cancer Biology, and has co-chaired the 2020 Nobel Conference on Cancer in the Age of Biotechnology. Burrack mentors undergraduates through FYRE projects on fungal pathogen evolution and resistance. Her publication record includes more than 20 peer-reviewed articles, with over 1,400 citations. Key publications comprise 'Erg251 has complex and pleiotropic effects on sterol composition, azole susceptibility, filamentation, and stress response phenotypes' (PLoS Pathogens, 2024), 'Genomic Diversity across Candida auris Clinical Isolates Shapes Rapid Development of Antifungal Resistance In Vitro and In Vivo' (mBio, 2022), 'CaMad2 Promotes Multiple Aspects of Genome Stability Beyond Its Direct Function in Chromosome Segregation' (Genes, 2019), 'A natural histone H2A variant lacking the Bub1 phosphorylation site and regulated depletion of centromeric histone CENP-A foster evolvability in Candida albicans' (PLoS Genetics, 2019), 'Flexibility of centromere and kinetochore structures' (Trends in Genetics, 2012), and 'Genome-Wide RNAi Screen for Host Factors Required for Intracellular Bacterial Infection' (Science, 2005).