Halmos Professor Makes Multiple Telemundo Appearances

Last month, the “Amenaza Escondida” (“Hidden Threats”) portion of Telemundo’s Al Rojo Vivo included three segments featuring Halmos’ Julie Torruellas Garcia, Ph.D.  The show’s producer swabbed washers/dryers, mattresses, and air ducts and brought samples to Garcia’s lab where undergraduate biology major Ashley Guillen-Tapia assisted with determining if E. coli and S. aureus were present in any of the samples.  The segments titled “Alertan sobre proliferación de bacterias en las lavadoras (Warning about the growth of bacteria in washing machines)”, “Bacterias en colchones: alertan por hongos y criaturas que podrían causar enfermedades (Bacteria on mattresses: warnings of fungus and creatures that can cause illness)”, and “Síndrome de la casa enferma podría afectar a tu familia (Sick house syndrome can affect your family)” can be viewed at the included links.

Torruellas Garcia is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences. She earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Miami and conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute. Research in the Garcia Lab is conducted exclusively by NSU undergraduate students and focuses on developing techniques to detect novel antibiotics that inhibit bacterial type III secretion systems, examining the efficacy of electrostatic sprayers for the delivery of disinfectants and identifying bacteria from everyday items for the news.

Posted 03/13/22