Hayley Green '22

Microbiology, iSTEP German STEM

“Watching how people think is really interesting. Good researchers are open and inquisitive; they learn from experience, and they come up with original questions.”

Hayley Green ’22 purposefully puts herself in situations outside her comfort zone. “That’s what college is all about,” she says. Still a junior, she’s already worked in three UMass Amherst labs and launched a start-up company.

Arriving at UMass with laboratory skills from a technical high school, she immediately became a research assistant in the microbiology lab of Professor Kristen DeAngelis. In addition to her lab duties, she took on an independent research project, measuring extracellular enzyme rates in isolates to see how the enzymatic rates change under increasing temperatures.

Simultaneously, Hayley worked with JengYu Chou ’22 and Anna Maria Miller-Perez ’22 to launch a start-up company, iSpy. “We apply artificial intelligence technology to identify microbes based on microcolony morphology,” she says. The technology is similar to facial recognition software and could be used in laboratories, breweries, or farms to quickly and accurately identify bacteria. In 2019 iSpy’s team of first-year students achieved quite a coup; they advanced to the finals of the Innovation Challenge, the campus’s high-stakes entrepreneurship competition.

Lauding Hayley’s entrepreneurial skills, DeAngelis said, “She has a vision for applying microbiology to solve the biggest problems facing society. She’s a strong critical thinker with a curious intellect.”

In the summer following her first year at UMass Amherst, Hayley began work in both the cell culture lab and the light microscopy lab of the UMass Institute for Applied Life Sciences. She helped develop a mammalian cell library and cryopreservation techniques for the plant culture facility.  In the light microscopy lab, she trained new users, aided in experiments, and maintained the microscopes.

Looking to branch out into interdisciplinary research, Hayley recently started work in the Stockbridge School of Agriculture lab of Assistant Professor Marco Keiluweit. She may eventually use her second major, iSTEP German STEM, to attend a doctoral program in Germany. Whatever graduate degree she pursues, she’s certain it will involve research. “I want to keep pushing the boundaries of my knowledge and skills and research is where I can accomplish that,” she says.