
Caiti Smukowski Heil, PhD
Asst. Professor, NC State University
Prior to my gig as a new Assistant Professor at NC State, I was a PhD student at Duke University with Mohamed Noor and a postdoc at the University of Washington with Maitreya Dunham. Outside of the lab, you can find me hanging out with my family and my cats, Monkey & Business. I like listening to podcasts, sampling from local breweries, and exploring the great outdoors.


Elizabeth Moore, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Elizabeth joins the Heil, Irwin, and Dunn labs as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, studying the costs and benefits of mutualisms between nectar yeasts and bee pollinators. Prior to starting at NCSU, Elizabeth was a PhD student with Joel Kingsolver at UNC Chapel Hill, where she investigated the effects of climate change and high temperature stress on host-parasitoid interactions. Outside of the lab, Elizabeth is an avid equestrian who serves as a barn manager at JoyRide Equestrian, LLC. She spends most of her free time training her horse, exploring nature to find interesting insects to identify, and playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Enrique Schwarzkopf, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Enrique is a dry lab biologist interested in the role of recombination in the evolutionary process. Before joining the Heil lab, he was a PhD student at Washington State University in Omar Cornejo's lab.

Undergraduate Researchers

Alexxis Gutierrez
Alexxis is a senior working on characterizing sourdough strains of S. cerevisiae and S. uvarum.

Lindsey Wilson
Lindsey is a junior working on characterizing local nectar yeasts.
You? We aren't currently hiring, but please email Caiti to keep in touch about future opportunities. See here for more information.
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Former Lab Members
Lauren Bailey, M.S. in Functional Genomics, 2020-22
Mili Jimenez, Undergraduate Researcher, 2021-22
Anna Cormack, Undergraduate Researcher, 2019-21
Amilcar Rodriguez, Undergraduate Researcher, 2019-21
Caiti Lahue, Technician in Dunn and Heil labs, 2019-21
Musa Malik, Undergraduate Researcher, 2019-20