Donna Balding, Ph. D. is currently serving as the Dean of the Graduate School at Middle Georgia State University. She was awarded the George W. Woodruff Fellowship to attain her Ph. D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Emory University School of Medicine for her work comparing DNA site specific recombination systems and transposition systems in pathogenic bacteria. An NIH IRACDA FIRST Postdoctoral Fellowship supported Dr. Balding's post-doctoral position at Emory University, where her work focused on the mechanisms of iron uptake and utilization in bacterial pathogens. During this post-doctoral research, Dr. Balding served as a visiting scientist at the University of Calgary, working on the purification of outer membrane receptors involved in the stripping of heme from host hemoglobin. Her areas of specialization include molecular systems, bacterial pathogenesis, protein biochemistry, and DNA recombination.