The Center for Advanced Microbiome Research and Innovation (CAMRI) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine is pleased to highlight Kayla Carter, PhD, MPH, a postdoctoral fellow at CAMRI, as a recipient of the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s (UMB) MPower Early Scholar Award.
This competitive award program was launched to support graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty whose research has been impacted by recent funding disruptions. In its first rounds, the program has awarded nearly $1.3 million across UMB, underscoring a strong institutional commitment to sustaining early-career researchers during a challenging funding landscape.
Dr. Carter is mentored by Drs. Rebecca Brotman and Jacques Ravel. Their work focuses on understanding how the cervicovaginal microenvironment influences the natural history of Chlamydia trachomatis infection. Using stored samples from a longitudinal cohort study, she is identifying key microbial, immunological, and metabolic factors associated with the spontaneous clearance of infection in women. This work has important implications for understanding host–microbiome interactions and informing new strategies to prevent and treat sexually transmitted infections.
The MPower award will provide critical support to advance this research and enable Dr. Carter to present her findings at the upcoming American Society for Microbiology Microbe conference, an important venue for scientific exchange and collaboration.
“This will be an excellent opportunity for me to begin building transdisciplinary collaborations as I transition into the next stage of my career,” said Dr. Carter. “Building these collaborations during this career transition will be immensely beneficial to my budding independent research program.”
Dr. Carter is currently expanding her research portfolio from observational epidemiologic analyses to mechanistic, in vitro studies, aligning with CAMRI’s mission to integrate multi-omics data with experimental systems to uncover causal relationships in host–microbiome interactions.
“This recognition highlights the importance of supporting emerging investigators at critical career transitions,” said Jacques Ravel, PhD, Director of CAMRI. “Dr. Carter’s work exemplifies the kind of rigorous, translational microbiome research that CAMRI is committed to advancing.”
The MPower Early Scholar Awards are part of the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State, which has committed $9.1 million over three years to support early-career researchers across UMB and the University of Maryland, College Park.
For more information and to read the full university announcement, visit:
UMB’s MPower Early Scholar Awardees Announced
March 18, 2026