Suegene Noh

Evolutionary biologist Suegene Noh specializes in computational approaches to genomics. Her research explores symbiotic relationships between different species, such as between social amoebas (known as Dicty) and their resident bacteria. Her work offers potential challenges to many aspects of basic biological theory and has implications for disease biology and epidemiology. 

Noh is the first author of several papers published in top-tier journals, and she was invited to write a commentary in PNAS—commentaries are the most-read articles in this influential journal—and the piece solidified her reputation as a leading scholar on genome evolution in symbiosis. Noh has also succeeded in securing grant funding, including a $270,000 NIH-INBRE award. She has helped her colleagues reimagine their pedagogy to serve Colby’s changing student body better, worked to ensure that faculty computing needs are addressed, and participated regularly in the Colby Achievement Program in the Sciences.

Noh came to Colby in 2017 after completing post-doctoral fellowships at Washington University in St. Louis and Kansas State University. She earned her Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut and her B.A. in biological sciences and English language and literature from Seoul National University in Korea.