Evann Hilt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the University of Minnesota and Medical Director of the Infectious Diseases Diagnostic Laboratory and the Special Pathogens Unit lab for the Fairview health system. She received her MS and PhD from Loyola University Chicago, where her research contributed to the discovery and characterization of the female urinary microbiome. She completed a Clinical Microbiology and Public Health Fellowship at UCLA and is board certified by the American Board of Medical Microbiology. Her clinical and research interests include infectious disease diagnostics, laboratory preparedness, and the implementation of emerging diagnostic technologies, with expertise in molecular diagnostics and next-generation sequencing, including whole-genome, metagenomic, and long-read sequencing