autumn 2018 news

This autumn brings 2 new arrivals, graduate student Alec Downie and GHP postdoc Jerry Nutor. A very hearty welcome to both!

The autumn also brings departures of various sorts. Former graduate student Jackie recently started a postdoc with Micaela Martinez at Columbia, to investigate circadian and seasonal rhythms in human immune function. Former postdoc Sarah has now started her new job at Keck Science Department of The Claremont Colleges in California. Both seem to be enjoying their new ventures. And former research assistant Tina has moved on to a research support role for the entire EEB department, so although we miss her daily presence, she hasn’t gone too far from us, and we are still determined to get her to a demolition derby one fine day soon! We wish them all well in their new roles.

Finally, congratulations to senior thesis student Teeto, who won a photo contest with an excellent image from her fieldwork at Mountain Lake Biological Station. Well done, Teeto!

Mid-year, Sarah will be taking up her new job of Assistant Professor of Biology at Claremont McKenna, Pitzer and Scripps Colleges, in sunny California!!! Congratulations, Sarah! Fantastic news for you and the family, though we will miss you!

Various recent and current members of the Graham Group have already had an eventful autumn:
1) Micaela Martinez has departed Princeton, alas, but is now happily launching into her next career phase, on the faculty of Columbia University!! Hearty congratulations, Micaela!
2) Courtney Thomason, after truly heroic mouse-trapping with us in Virginia for several summers, has landed a job as a Research Specialist at the UT-Knoxville vet school starting 1 Nov. Many congratulations, Courtney!
and 3) because, luckily, not everyone has fledged yet: just today, Ed has officially published his first paper, complete with accompanying audioslides. Congratulations and well done, Ed!

Welcome and best wishes to wee Harriet, who arrived very nearly right on time, early in the morning of 3 May! And congratulations to her proud parents, Sarah and Ross!!

In various important ways, it has been a fantastic autumn for the Graham Group, what with Micaela receiving an NIH Early Independence Award to start her own group at Princeton (!!! go Micaela!!!), Ph.D. Alumna Ann preparing to start a faculty position at Vanderbilt (!!! go Ann!!!), and the arrival of Liana from Macquarie University (!!! go Liana!!!). And Andrea is on sabbatical at ETH Zurich, learning lots of new and fantastic mathematics of immunology. More somber developments in the nation — especially this first week of November — have hit us hard, though, and Action Looms. Please watch this space.

Micaela’s work in digital epidemiology has recently been featured in Science magazine! By developing Google Trends as an epidemiological tool, she has helped launch an exciting new age of outbreak monitoring for under-reported infectious diseases.

The Ecological Society of America recently challenged scientists to describe their work using only the 1000 most common English words. Sarah mightily rose to the challenge, generating a charming synopsis of life history strategies of parasites as well as the ecological parasitologists that study them! Outstanding job, Sarah!!!

The Graham Group has been honored to receive great press and social media coverage in the past several months! For example…

-in a story on Immunology Gone Wild in Bioscience…

-via a Wormy World podcast on Ask a Biologist recorded during Andrea’s autumn visit to the outstanding ASU…

-and in storified tweets from the AAAS Evo Med symposium in DC. 

Hearty thanks to these writers, interviewers and tweeters!!

This paper is an excellent example of using biologically-grounded mathematics to integrate mechanisms of immune defense into broader organismal physiology: press release