We are delighted to announce that the wonderful Ed Schrom became Dr. Ed Schrom this week!!! MANY congratulations, Ed, and very best wishes in your new adventures at the NIH!

We’ve undertaken some nerd fun this summer, with a charming cartoon and public science story on Liana’s recent meta-analysis of how worms might mess with vaccines as well as a pretty awesome video of Andrea explaining what the heck a disease ecologist does for a lay audience.

Outstanding alumnus Danny Navarrete is pursuing his Ph.D. at Stanford and is now in the news there, with his inspiring family story. We are all so excited to follow Danny’s career path. Will the trypanosomes that he studied in college eventually win out, or will he instead continue to hone his expertise in prokaryotic disease agents? What balance will he strike between mathematics and lab work as he continues to develop as a scientist? What we know for certain is that he is continuing to shine.

Not long before lockdown, Andrea had the very good fortune to participate in Darwin Day festivities at the University of Southern Mississippi. She gave a talk about (what else) worms and immune systems, she admired and applauded a student game show in which all questions focused on evolutionary biology, and she took part in an amazing radio show called The Educated Guess, created and hosted by Professor Don Yee. Please listen to these, as Don has a real knack for making great radio! Andrea is on episode #5: Evolution, you’re making me sick.

In the midst of nascent COVID-19 work, our core research program marches on. And, excitingly, our work on rewilded mice was recently covered in a fascinating perspective article on what it means, ethically and scientifically, for laboratory rodents to have a good life. They do seem robust and healthy out on the farm… especially since we shield them from the likes of cats!

Here’s a bit of good nerdy cheer in the midst of these fascinating but troubling times….
When Andrea recently gave the Blodwen Lloyd Binns Memorial Lecture to the Glasgow Natural History Society — a profound honor for Andrea, not least because Blodwen Lloyd Binns was an exceptional woman! — a member of the audience took the extraordinary step of drawing the whole talk in real time. How cool is that?!

Well, we’ve finally dipped our toes into preprint waters, so sneak previews are now available for our latest results on immune function in rewilded and fungus-filled lab mice, as well as for Cara’s bat cells cultured in vitro!

Our collaborative work on infection duration with the awesome Anieke van Leeuwen, the capital Clay Cressler, and the superb Sarah Budischak was recently featured in a great news story along with charming photos of both Clay and parasites!

Andrea was honored to be named a 2018 Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Kavli Foundation. The associated symposium was truly inspiring, and the NAS website includes the full program as well as a link to Andrea’s symposium talk. This post was stuck in HTML traffic for an unfathomably long time, but it has arrived in public view at last to make the announcement!

November brought us exciting new opportunities for outreach. First, Jackie and Andrea worked with editors from the Biomedical Science Journal for Kids (who knew!??), as well as Young Experts from our own families, to rewrite our 2018 PLoS Biology paper on city mice and country mice, for a 10-13 year old audience. Andrea then gave a public lecture at The Cooper Union in NYC. She loved fielding questions from the public and from students of painting and sculpture. Our worms are now reaching whole new audiences, it seems!