USA Microbiology and Immunology Honor Retiring Faculty

The University of South Alabama Department of Microbiology and Immunology recently hosted a retirement celebration for Dr. David Wood, professor and chair of microbiology and immunology, and Dr. John Foster, professor emeritus of microbiology and immunology.

Dr. Wood joined the USA College of Medicine faculty in 1979, and he will officially retire on Dec. 31, 2018. He earned his Ph.D. in microbiology from the Medical College of Georgia. He completed postdoctoral studies at the Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University.

Dr. Wood, whose research focuses on the obligate intracellular parasitic bacterium Rickettsia prowazekii, has been honored with a Research Career Development Award and a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health. He has served as president of the Southeastern Branch of the American Society for Microbiology and the American Society for Rickettsiology, as well as a member of the Bacteriology and Mycology Study Section of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Foster retired in October 2017, after serving the Department of Microbiology and Immunology for 30 years. He earned his Ph.D. in microbiology from Hahnemann University College of Medicine (now part of Drexel University) in Philadelphia. He completed postdoctoral studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Foster was named 1994 Hahnemann University Alumnus of the year, and received the 2007 Southeastern ASM branch “Robert Eagon Award” for accomplishments in microbial physiology. He has served in the American Society for Microbiology as the Chair of Division K (Microbial Physiology and Metabolism) and as an invited ad hoc member of the Microbial Physiology and Bacterial Pathogenesis Study Sections for the National Institutes of Health.

View more photos from the event on Flickr.