Micaiah Ward

"Say it in 6: Missing from Summary Micaiah's research focuses on the evolution of venom resistance. She injects fruit flies with very diluted doses of venom and studies how the injected venom carries from one generation to the next until the test subjects stop dying. She can then sequence the genomes of resistant flies to locate genetic differences and to isolate the genes responsible for developing venom resistance. Micaiah hopes ultimately to develop means of using venom in medicine. For now, she asks questions like: Where does venom come from? What's in it? How is it changing? How does it actually work? Micaiah pursues these queries within her PhD program in Biological Sciences at Florida State, where she has won a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. "