Working with eusocial bees to advance understanding of host-microbiome ecology and evolution
superorganism | multiscale | cross-domain
Incoming Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Oklahoma (August 2026)
– Integrating ‘omics strategies and laboratory experiments –
If you’re looking for me, you’ll find me in the woods, at the apiary/meliponary, in front of my computer with the terminal open, in the microscopy room, at the bench with a flame, or dissecting bees.
Field work
Bioinformatics
In vitro assays
In vivo assays
Beyond ‘formal research,’ you will definitely find me happily involved in these activities below.
Teaching
From fieldwork to data analysis. Here at the MBL Microbial Diversity course, teaching how to predict and annotate mobile genetic elements from metagenomes (hands-on).
Mentoring
Graduate, undergraduate, and high school students. Mentoring programs include NSF-REU and the Jim Holland Summer Science Research Program (SSRP) from IU.
Outreach and policy-informing
Science fairs, beekeeping events, public debates. Here, giving an invited talk on bee diseases and emergence during a public debate on Brazilian legislation related to hive translocation (https://youtu.be/SBSfD3-QmhA?si=4PnAK7tnbX1wFpxG&t=4).
Varied collaborations
Beekeepers, journalists, artists. Check out this composition by John Gibson featuring our bees (starting at minute 37: https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/b68x31xw6k)
Lílian Caesar
lcaesar@iu.edu
Lílian Caesar 