Dr. Donaldson received a BS in Microbiology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a PhD in Microbiology from the California Institute of Technology, where he won the Clauser Prize for the best doctoral thesis. He was a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rockefeller University. He started his own laboratory at UCLA in 2025. Dr. Donaldson’s work has identified new mechanisms that sustain the spatial and temporal stability of the microbiome and how molecular conversations between bacteria and intestinal cells can impact health.
