Zach earned his BS in biology with a minor in chemistry. His undergraduate research focused on isolating and elucidating antimicrobial fungal natural products. Before graduate school, Zach worked in an environmental testing laboratory using gas and liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry to quantitate pesticide and solvent residues. He is now researching in Jason Slot's Lab developing multi-omic analyses to study the evolution of tryptophan-derived compounds in the fungal family Atheliaceae.
Email: konkel.8@buckeyemail.osu.edu
Education
B.S. Biology, Oregon State University, 2017
Long Term Career Interests
Neurochemical ecology
Genetic engineering
Bioinformatics
Current Status in TPS
Post-candidacy
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jason Slot
Co-Mentor: Dr. Jessica Cooperstone
First Year Rotations
1. Dr. Tom Mitchell
2. Dr. Jason Slot
Grants and Awards
2019 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Regeneron Scholarship (Programming for Biology Workshop)
2019 Mycological Society of America Student-Mentor Travel Award
2019 Director's Associateship, OARDC, Ohio State University
2018 University Fellowship, Ohio State University
Publications
Konkel, Z., Scott, K., Slot, J. (2021). Draft genome of the termite symbiont Athelia (Fibularhizoctonia) sp. TMB5. Microbiology Resource Announcements, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1128/MRA.01230-20
Adpressa, D. A., Connolly, L. R., Konkel, Z. M., Neuhaus, G. F., Chang, X. L., Pierce, B. R., Smith, K. M., Freitag, M., Loesgen, S. (2019). A metabolomics-guided approach to discover Fusarium graminearum metabolites after removal of a repressive histone modification. Fungal Genetics and Biology, 103256. doi.org/10.1016/j.fgb.2019.103256