Volker Mai (1999).  Volker, who was a former national champion of the German republic in triple jump, joined UGA as an undergraduate, receiving his B.S. in Biochemistry in 1992.  He subsequently started in our graduate program and entered the laboratory of Juergen Wiegel. Volker developed the first genetic system for anaerobic thermophilic Gram-type positive bacteria (Thermoanaerobacterium and Thermoanaerobacter species), resulting in three first-author publications (FEMS-Letters, 1997; Gene, 2000; Applied Environmental Microbiology, 2000) and a chapter in the ASM Manual of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (1999).  This genetic system, which Volker further modified for Clostridium thermocellum in cellulose to ethanol conversion, is now used by academic and industrial laboratories in the US and Japan. After finishing his Ph.D., Volker obtained an M.P.H from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, MA, did his postdoctoral work at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD, and accepted an Assistant Professor position at the University of Maryland Medical School in 2003 in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine.  Since September of 2007 Volker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Cell Science at the University of Florida in the new Emerging Pathogens Institute, where his lab investigates associations between diversity in the microbial communities that inhabit the digestive track and human health.