Assistant Vice President, Innovation & Strategic Partnerships at Kennesaw State University · Co-Founder, MycoLogic Inc.
Trained as an applied and environmental microbiologist, I've spent two decades moving between the bench and the boardroom — studying the fungus that is killing North America's bats, building a mushroom-cultivation company out of that same lab, and now helping other KSU faculty carry their own discoveries out into the world.
A decade in the dark, chasing a fungus that was killing millions of bats.
My dissertation at Georgia State University addressed biological and chemical controls for Geomyces destructans — later renamed Pseudogymnoascus destructans, the psychrophilic fungus responsible for white-nose syndrome (WNS). That question has stayed with me ever since.
Since 2012, federal and private funders — the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Bat Conservation International, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and The Conservation Fund among them — have supported roughly $2M in research I've led or co-led into how WNS spreads and how it might be slowed: antifungal volatile organic compounds produced by soil bacteria, multi-year mitigation strategies at hibernacula like Georgia's Black Diamond Tunnel, and the discovery that roadway culverts can act as transmission corridors for the fungus between sites.
I've written about the disease's spread for a general audience twice in The Conversation, and our work has been covered by National Geographic, the New York Times, and Georgia Public Broadcasting.
BioInnovation Lab field sampling — culverts as a possible transmission corridor for P. destructans, Georgia coastal plain.
Specimen 03 — The Lab
The BioInnovation Laboratory, Kennesaw State University
I opened the lab in 2017 as a hybrid space — part traditional research group, part incubator — where undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs could work on real applied-microbiology problems alongside me. It now runs four connected research lines.
01
White-Nose Syndrome
Antifungal VOCs, field mitigation at bat hibernacula, and transmission ecology of P. destructans.
02
Emerging Fungal Pathogens
Antifungal susceptibility and essential-oil activity against Candida auris and related clinical threats.
03
Mushroom Cultivation
Strain-specific fruiting parameters for gourmet and nutraceutical species — the research base that became MycoLogic.
04
Brewing Science
Fermentation, yeast strain performance, and quality control support for Atlanta-area craft breweries.
Lab undergraduates presenting mushroom-cultivation research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, which I co-chaired at KSU in 2019.Lab members moving fruited oyster mushrooms into a controlled-environment chamber.KSU students on a study-abroad trip to Montepulciano, Italy — part of the mentorship I try to build around the lab.
Specimen 04 — Publications
22 peer-reviewed papers, one patent, two essays for a general audience.
A selection below; the complete record is on ORCID.
2025
A Complete Transfer Learning-Based Pipeline for Discriminating Between Select Pathogenic Yeasts from Microscopy Photographs. Parker, Hannagan, Strydom, et al. Pathogens, 14(5), 504. doi.org/10.3390/pathogens14050504
2025
Winter activity of tricolored bats in aboveground and subterranean hibernacula in the southeastern USA. Loeb, Bridges, Winters, et al. Scientific Reports, 15, 13644. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-97703-y
2023
Fungi as a commercial source of eumelanin: current understanding & prospects. Beeson, Gabriel & Cornelison. Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology. doi.org/10.1093/jimb/kuad014
2022
Development of a multi-year white-nose syndrome mitigation strategy using antifungal volatile organic compounds. Gabriel, McDonald, Lutsch, et al. PLoS ONE, 17(12), e0278603. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278603
2022
Antifungal Activity of Select Essential Oils against Candida auris and Their Interactions with Antifungal Drugs. Parker, Gabriel, Graham, Butts & Cornelison. Pathogens, 11(821). doi.org/10.3390/pathogens11080821
2022
Roadway-Associated Culverts May Serve as a Transmission Corridor for Pseudogymnoascus destructans and White-Nose Syndrome in the Coastal Plains and Coastal Region of Georgia, USA. Lutsch, McDonald, Gabriel & Cornelison. Journal of Wildlife Diseases. doi.org/10.7589/JWD-D-21-00069
2019
Lipolytic Activity and the Utilization of Fatty Acids Associated with Bat Sebum by Pseudogymnoascus destructans. Gabriel, Neville, Pierce & Cornelison. Mycopathologia. doi.org/10.1007/s11046-019-00381-4
2018
Biomimicry of volatile-based microbial control for managing emerging fungal pathogens. Gabriel, Sexton & Cornelison. Journal of Applied Microbiology, 124, 1024–1031.
2014
A preliminary report on the contact-independent antagonism of Pseudogymnoascus destructans by Rhodococcus rhodochrous strain DAP96253. Cornelison, Keel, Gabriel, et al. BMC Microbiology, 14, 246.
2019
US 10,300,093 B2 — Inhibiting or Reducing Fungal Growth in Animals. Issued patent, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Plus contributions in Journal of Veterinary Science & Technology, MicrobiologyOpen (×2), GERMS, World Applied Sciences Journal, International Journal of Vitamin and Nutrition Research, Journal of Microbiological Methods, Environmental Science & Technology, Water Research, and a chapter in the Encyclopedia of Food Microbiology.
Specimen 05 — The Venture
MycoLogic: taking the fruiting room out of the lab and into a shipping container.
Co-founded in 2021 with fellow BioInnovation Lab researcher Kyle Gabriel, MycoLogic packages the strain-specific cultivation data from our mushroom research into hardware and software that lets farmers grow specialty mushrooms — shiitake, oyster, lion's mane, reishi — at commercial scale.
The core product, the Gen 3 Fruiting Module, retrofits a 40-foot shipping container into a semi-autonomous, climate-controlled growing environment — sensors, environmental controllers, and proprietary software layered onto infrastructure a small farm can actually afford.
The company has been built on Georgia Research Alliance venture-development funding, Georgia Department of Agriculture specialty-crop grants, and a run of competition wins that funded the jump from lab prototype to deployed farms.
Gen 3 Fruiting Module, exteriorGen 3 Fruiting Module, interiorShiitake in productionLion's mane, Gowin Valley Farms
Tending fruiting racks, BioInnovation LabPitching at the AFBF Ag Innovation Challenge, 2023Georgia Research Alliance recognition event, with Gov. Brian Kemp
Specimen 06 — Leadership
Building the pipeline other faculty walk through
Running MycoLogic from inside the university taught me what faculty actually need to move an idea into the world — so KSU asked me to build that infrastructure for everyone else.
