About ICMC
The ICMC team of experts are here to help you achieve your goals. Please reach out with any questions at any stage in the process.
Core Leadership
Sarah Satola, PHD
Scientific Director
Dr. Sarah Satola is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease with a secondary appointment in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. She is also the Director of the Georgia Emerging Infections Program Laboratory, a collaboration that includes the Georgia Department of Public Health, Emory University, the Atlanta VA Medical Center to conducts active surveillance and initiate research studies related to food-borne pathogens, invasive bacterial pathogens, viral respiratory pathogens, and healthcare-associated infections.
Dr. Satola’s research interests include molecular epidemiology and genetic mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance and evaluating antibiotic heteroresistance in multi-drug resistant organism.
Gregory Damhorst, MD/PhD
Medical Director
Dr. Greg Damhorst joined the ICMC as Medical Director in the summer of 2024. Dr. Damhorst received his MD/PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaignin 2018 and completed Internal Medicine Residence and Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Emory University. During his PhD in Bioengineering he worked with microfluidics and nanotechnology developing diagnostic devices focused on HIV applications at the point-of-care. As an Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Emory, his research interests are in novel assay development, biomarker discovery and diagnostic test validation across the spectrum of infectious diseases.
Timothy Read, PHD
Associate Director of Genomics
Tim's research centers around pathogen evolution using bacterial genomics and metagenomics. His group uses and builds pipelines for processing large bacterial genome databases.
Jesse J. Waggoner, MD
Associate Director of Virology
jesse.waggoner@emoryhealthcare.org
Jesse J. Waggoner is an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine. His work focuses on the development and evaluation of molecular diagnostics for human viral pathogens, principally respiratory viruses and emerging/re-emerging RNA viruses. As part of the ICMC, Dr. Waggoner and his laboratory perform investigational molecular testing for SARS-CoV-2, including the detection of specific mutations associated with variants of concern/interest.
Dr. Ahmed Babiker, MBBS
Infectious Disease Consultant
Dr. Ahmed Babiker is a dual trained infectious diseases and medical microbiology physician. Dr. Babiker's primary research interest is the clinical and molecular epidemiology of multi-drug resistant healthcare-associated infections, the role of microbiome in colonization resistance and the integration of novel diagnostics and -omics technology into clinical microbiology and infectious diseases workflows.
Core Team
Sarah Lohsen, PhD
Dr. Sarah Lohsen is a Staff Scientist in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases. She has a PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology from Emory University. She spent 7 years working to understand macrolide resistance and heteroresistance in Streptococcus pneumoniae in the lab of Dr. David Stephens at Emory University. Outside of the lab she enjoys crafting, and spending time with her menagerie of children, cats, dogs, and fish.
D'Ante Gooden, BS
Lead Research Specialist and Lab Manager
D'Ante earned his BS in Biology from the University Of West Georgia in 2020. His expertise is in Genomics, Microbiology and knowing random life and Georgia facts.
Andrea T. Ashline, MPH, MLS
Lead Research Specialist
Andrea T. Ashline is a research lead at Satola lab. Andrea received her BS in Lab sciences in 2018 and an MPH in Infectious disease epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory. Andrea joined the ICMC team in June and is passionate about research, public health surveillance and safety, and educating and helping Hispanic communities.
Madeleine Boulis, BS
Research Specialist
Madeleine Boulis graduated from Carleton College in 2023 with a BA in Biology and a minor in Japanese. Her expertise is in Microbiology and Immunology, and she has a growing interest in the fields of Biomedical Engineering and Bioinformatics. When not doing scientific research, she enjoys listening to audiobooks, playing with her cat, and writing and hosting table-top role-playing games for her friends.
Alexandra Rios, BS
Research Specialist
Alex is a Research Specialist with the Satola Lab. She recently graduated from Auburn University with a BS in Biomedical Sciences, where she worked as both a virology research assistant and a diagnostic clinical microbiology assistant.
Beth Coughlin
Lead Research Specialist
Beth has a BS in Psychology from Tufts University. She also studied for a Masters in Microbiology and Immunology while at the Medical University of South Carolina which focused on the role of the immune system in the development of Age-related Macular Degeneration.
