iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Headed to DC just as soon as I finish packing… #asm2026 #orangeboy

Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Gearing up for my first visit to @asm.org conference since 2011 in New Orleans, when it was called the General Meeting! I’m participating in a panel called: “Poster to Paper — Ask the Experts” on Sunday, June 7 from 11:15am–12:00pm ET. Hope to see you there or at your poster/session(s)!!! 🫡 #asm2026

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Congrats to Anish Pyne for winning the People’s Choice Award in tonight’s 3 Minute Thesis competition @cmu.edu 🥳🥳🥳 @cmuscience.bsky.social

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Congrats to Erin and Betsy for passing their qualifying exams last week!!!! Officially 3 PhD candidates in the lab @cmuscience.bsky.social now! 😎

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

In the same theme, TAs Betsy and Erin (PhD students in my lab) presented on thinking of migration of bacteria between upper & lower respiratory tract through the lens of island biogeography. Heavily inspired by this awesome paper & others pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24702670/

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Our last two guest lectures in Ecology @cmuscience.bsky.social were part of our theme thinking of infection as an ecologist (human = environment). First, Dr. Yasmin Hilliam (Bomberger Lab at Dartmouth) discussed how respiratory viral infection changes nutrients in airways, impacting microbiomes.

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Our latest guest lecture in CMU Ecology class was Dr. Gus Ramirez (CalState LA @zombiephylotype.bsky.social) discussing research cruises, ocean biogeochemistry, & microbe-octopi interactions at sea mounts. Stunning & mind boggling to hear how you sample this stuff that is 1000s of meters underwater.

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Today’s guest speaker in Ecology @cmuscience.bsky.social was perfect for Halloween: Arkadiy Garber @ironark.bsky.social from the McCutcheon Lab at ASU, discussing bacterial endosymbionts that support the junk food diets of sap-feeding insects! 😈

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

We had our first guest lecturer in my Ecology class @cmuscience.bsky.social today! Dr. Delaney Miller from the Handelsman lab at Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (@widofficial.bsky.social) & HHMI gave an absolutely beautiful talk on how microbes in the rhizosphere impact plant development.

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

On our way to the Parsek/Woz retreat in Leavenworth, WA!

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

The newish PI styrofoam box collection to winter cat shelter pipeline 👩‍🔬

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Extremely proud of my postdoc Dr. Elizabeth Knorr for successfully mentoring 5 undergrad research students through several cloning projects this summer!!! Congrats to the mini Knorr Lab! @cmuscience.bsky.social

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Headed home after a fabulous week in RI for the Microbial Adhesion & Signal Transduction GRC. We even had a critical mass of Parsek/Woz alums for a photo!

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

(Trigger warning) May my next pizza be Italian 🙏

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Off to Milan for #ECFS2025! Looking forward to catching up with fabulous European CF colleagues and being a massive history nerd in Roma with my brother after the conference! 🤓

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Congratulations to CMU Bio undergrad Olivia for getting into her top picks for dental school and to Jot (my lab’s first student 🥲) for successfully defending her honors thesis in the Quantitative Bio & Bioinformatics (QBB) Master’s program!!! Today is a good day. @cmuscience.bsky.social

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 04/01/2024

The Armbruster Lab is officially open in the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh! We're studying how bacteria in biofilms persist in the built environment & transition into the host to cause infections. Happy to be here! 🤓

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Catherine Armbruster @catarmbruster.bsky.social · 14/11/2023

Rite of passage for micro postdocs transitioning to faculty: replicate a Tn library! Grateful to be wrapping up at the same time as @fabricejpierre.bsky.social (also starting his lab in Jan) so we can compare notes & team up on pipetting. Thanks to Sophie and my labmates for helping, too!

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