Sarah Lucas completed a B.S. degree in Microbiology with a minor in Biochemistry at Penn State in 2010. Following graduation she became a member of the Genomic Medicine and Infectious Disease groups at J. Craig Venter institute, under the mentorship of Dr. Karen Nelson and Dr. Bill Nierman. JCVI is where she realized her passion for studying microbial communities.

Sarah earned her Ph.D. in 2020 from the Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology multidisciplinary graduate program at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. She was advised by Dr. Ryan Hunter in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at UMN. Her thesis explored the use of genomic and bioinformatic methods to characterize microbial communities associated with chronic infections in the upper respiratory system. She coupled this with data-driven classical microbiology experiments to explore bacterial community interactions, particularly between mucin-degrading anaerobes and Staphylococcus aureus.

Sarah continued her research training with Dr. Pat Schloss at University of Michigan where she worked to developed analysis pipelines for reproducible viral genome identification from metagenomic data. Sarah has investigated viral gut populations in the context of colorectal cancer biomarker discovery, and viral community resistance and resiliance after antibiotic perturbation.