Gregory P Donaldson

Dr. Gregory P. Donaldson’s interest in bacteria began as an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park. There he worked with Dr. Vincent Lee to study biochemical mechanisms of cyclic-di-GMP signaling in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. He went on to PhD studies with Dr. Sarkis Mazmanian at Caltech, focusing on the bacterial genetics of mucosal colonization by gut microbiota, especially Bacteroides fragilis. To view these commensal bacteria through the lens of their mammalian hosts, Dr. Donaldson joined Dr. Daniel Mucida’s Laboratory of Mucosal Immunology at Rockefeller University as a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow. There he studied how adaptive immune responses to gut microbiota can also impact mammalian host biology. In 2025, Dr. Donaldson was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, & Molecular Genetics at UCLA.