Nicole Jimenez, PhD

2025 Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar

Nicole Jimenez graduated with her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology in 2021. Her graduate work centered on reproductive health research with Virginia Commonwealth University’s Vaginal Microbiome Consortium (VMC). Her research for the VMC encompassed comparative genomics of cervicovaginal bacteria, especially Bifidobacterium species, understanding correlations between the cervicovaginal microbiome in reproductive health and disease and maternal-infant microbial transmission and toddler health progression. She joined Dr. Melissa Herbst-Kralovetz's lab in the Summer of 2021 and has been using both her passion for advocacy work and science to assist with cervicovaginal microbiome research with a focus on gynecological conditions assisting in both wet lab work related to bacterial mechanisms that contribute to cervical and endometrial cancer development as well as microbiome analysis for clinical studies with a focus on health disparities within the Latine and Native American communities in Arizona. Dr. Jimenez has leveraged her molecular, genomics, and data science expertise to aid in achieving her long-term career goals as a translational microbiome scientist and an actively engaged community member of researchers at the College of Medicine-Phoenix.