Seth Bordenstein named a Fellow of the AAAS
Seth Bordenstein, professor of biology and entomology, the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair of Microbiome Sciences, and director of the Penn State One Health Microbiome Center, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a Fellow is a lifetime honor bestowed by peers upon members of the AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society, for their extraordinary achievements in advancing science. Bordenstein was honored for “distinguished contributions to the microbiome sciences, particularly for advancing our knowledge of host-associated microbiomes across the animal kingdom.”
“Seth is an extraordinary researcher, educator and mentor, and we are thrilled that all of his efforts are being recognized by AAAS,” said Beth McGraw, head of the Department of Biology at Penn State. “His leadership of the One Health Microbiome Center has been transformational, changing how researchers are approaching microbiome sciences and bringing visibility to the groundbreaking work happening in the center.”
Bordenstein is one of two Penn State Eberly College of Science faculty members, including Francesca Chiaromonte, and one of four at the University, out of the 449 fellows AAAS has named for 2025.
Bordenstein’s research focuses on the border where visible life ends and the microbiological world begins, particularly the principles that shape symbiotic interactions between animals, microbes, and viruses and the major applications of these interactions to human health. Several key questions of the Bordenstein Lab are: What are the roles of microorganisms in the origin of new host species? How can we utilize bacteria and their associated viruses to control insect pests, and what are the social, environmental, and genetic factors that define the number and types of microrganisms that dwell in the human gut and oral cavity? His team resolves how lived experiences and human microbiomes are intertwined with American health disparities.
The Bordenstein lab is also the home of Discover the Microbes Within: The Wolbachia Project, an integrative, discovery-based lab series with a 20-year history of outreach to middle and high school students worldwide. The award-winning program is directed by Sarah Bordenstein, who co-runs the Bordenstein lab.
Seth Bordenstein has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2014 Jeffrey Nordhaus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the 2014 Chancellor’s Award for Research, the 2017 Vanderbilt Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Research Award, the 2018 Chancellor Faculty Fellow Award and the 2020 Genetics Society of America Award for Excellence in Education. One of his papers received the 2024 High Impact Research Publication Award in One Health from the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and has been recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate and one of the World’s Top 2% of Scientists by Stanford/Elsevier.
Prior to joining Penn State, Seth Bordenstein was the Centennial Endowed Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University and founding director of The Vanderbilt Microbiome Innovation Center. He previously served as an adjunct assistant professor at Brown University and as a postdoctoral researcher and research scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. He received a bachelor’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology in 1997, a master’s degree in biology in 1999, and a doctoral degree in evolutionary genetics in 2002, all from the University of Rochester.
AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes more than 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. The nonprofit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more. For additional information visit the AAAS website.