Paul A Gulig,

Fun Fact: I love to sail, bike, run, and swim—and do triathlon sprints. I retired in May 2025 after 37 years on the faculty. At the end of my career I focused on teaching bacterial pathogenesis and administration. My research career was studying molecular pathogenesis, the use of genetic manipulation of microorganisms to understand the way that they cause disease. Over my tenure, I studied immune responses to Haemophilus influenzae type b with the goal of aiding vaccine development; molecular pathogenesis of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, focusing on the virulence plasmid in mouse models; Vibrio vulnificus pathogenesis, working to determine how this “flesh eating” bacterium found in oysters and estuarine waters replicates so rapidly in human tissues causing life-threatening infection; Oxalobacter formigenes, a beneficial bacterium that helps prevent kidney stones by stimulating the excretion of oxalate into the intestines from the blood.

For over 40 years, my career was been studying molecular pathogenesis, the use of genetic manipulation of microorganisms to understand the way that they cause disease. As a graduate student, I studied immune responses to Haemophilus influenzae type b with the goal of aiding vaccine development. As a postdoctoral fellow, I studied molecular pathogenesis of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, focusing on the virulence plasmid in mouse models. I brought this work with me to the University of Florida. I later transitioned into Vibrio vulnificus pathogenesis, working to determine how this “flesh eating” bacterium found in oysters and estuarine waters replicates so rapidly in human tissues causing life-threatening infection. I then moved to a beneficial bacterium, Oxalobacter formigenes, that helps prevent kidney stones by stimulating the excretion of oxalate into the intestines from the blood. My final research was drug discovery, attempting to develop new antibiotics that inhibit the beta-lactamase of Pseudomonas aeruginosa so as to enable beta-lactam antibiotics to be restored in their effectiveness. This work was done collaboratively with colleagues across the UF campus. I closed my lab in 2021.