Jill Ayers Email & Phone Number

Erie, Co, Us

Denver, Colorado, United States

After earning the promotion to Research Associate II at Cemvita, I continued my work as a bench-level scientist in what continued to be a quickly changing start-up environment. The changes brought during this time required me to pivot often, quickly, and eloquently and as a result required I switch projects, individual project goals, and direct managers multiple times throughout the year. Regardless of the consistent challenges, I continued to operate with a high standard of quality, as was noted by my superiors, as well as worked to better a variety of hard and soft skills to move our projects forward. The previous earned me becoming the longest tenured employee of the biomining vertical through these changing needs of the team and projects.

Denver, Colorado, United States

At Cemvita, I worked as a dedicated microbiologist to establish lab protocols in an early stage fast paced startup as one of the first additions to their biomining team. During this time, I helped manage project timelines and routine work to meet client expectations, managed schedules of and trained entry level technicians assigned to projects where I was the senior bench-level employee, and worked to directly increased anaerobic culturing in the biomining vertical by 100%.

Phoenix, Arizona, United States

At GCU, I taught introductory biology and microbiology lab courses with a short lectures preceding activities and experiments. My responsibilities included planning class schedules to ensure all required material for the day was covered and grading work in a timely manner with constructive feedback to help improve student understanding and success in class. I also held optional virtual office hours and study sessions to provide additional help and/or provide additional real-world context for interested students, as my teaching philosophy centers around encouraging students to dive into their curiosities and consider themselves scientists regardless of where they are at in their educational journey.

During my time as a master's student, I successfully tackled complex subject matter that I held no prior experience in by completing literature reviews and staging experiments to quickly learn about methanogens and grasp anaerobic microbiological principals and techniques. As a part of the accelerated master's program, this also required me to balance experimental work and writing my thesis with completing both my undergraduate and graduate course work.

MENTOR@ASU is a two semester student-led program aimed at teaching microbial research techniques and scientific peer mentorship. During my time in this program, I worked closely with my peers under the supervision of a PhD student and the PI of the sponsoring lab to learn key skills while working on real research projects. The work I achieved and dedication I showed in my first semester earned me an offer to complete an accelerated MS degree, allowing me to earn both my bachelor’s and master’s in a total 4 years. When I returned for my second semester in the program, I and one of my peers from the previous semester worked closely with the sponsoring PI to mentor incoming students while continuing to work towards project goals.

Master Of Science - Ms, Soil Microbiology

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Microbiology, General

Minor, Anthropology