Work in Progress(WIP)
Tuesdays,9:00am-10:00am, Room C2303 MCN
A note from your local DGS.
Dr. Jay Jerome and Dr. Chris Aiken are the DGSs for the two graduate programs within the Division of Molecular Pathogenesis.
For today:
Dr. Aiken would like to welcome the following students, who joined M&I labs:
Aung Soe Lin Cover Lab
Margaret Lorena Harvey Cover Lab
Lauren Williamson Crowe Lab
Amyn Murji Georgiev Lab
Ian Setliff Georgiev Lab
Bradley Steiner Hadjifrangiskou Lab
Kevin Childress Lacy Lab
Wyatt McDonnell Mallal Lab
Ly Huong Pham Moore Lab
Cody Strothers Sherwood Lab
We look forward to getting to know you and to seeing you make great discoveries!T
What can you do with a PhD?...
This month, here is a different version of a "where are they now". Instead of featuring an alumnus from the division, we approached an entrepreneur, who has his roots in microbiology. Dr. Lance Shaner, is a buddy of Dr. H... As in, they went to school together. While Dr. H. knew she wanted to do academia all along, and her PhD experience solidified that desire, Lance, was not the same... Here is his story:
Q. Introduce yourself: Where did you do your PhD and in what area of study/whose lab?
A.I obtained my Ph.D. at the University of Texas - Health Science Center Houston in the laboratory of Dr. Kevin Morano studying the heat shock response and molecular chaperones in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
2. What did you do after completion of your PhD? What prompted you to go that route?
A.I went directly to law school at the University of Houston. I went for an alternative career that would still utilize my scientific training. It didn't hurt that patent law paid much better than academia (if one could look past the outrageous cost of law school).
3. Tell us what you are doing now. How did you get here?
A. I was a patent lawyer for four years after law school. While I really enjoyed the people I worked with, I started to get bored with the work. One of my colleagues at the firm was starting a brewery -- Ten Ninety Brewing Co. -- and we started talking about the various aspects of planning, including the sourcing of brewing yeast. At the time, there were only three major liquid yeast providers to the craft brewing industry and none were located East of Colorado. That very day, I started planning Omega Yeast Labs, the company I started with my business partner in 2013. We supply brewing yeast and bacterial cultures to craft breweries all over the United States and Canada. Within 5 months of the initial conversation we leased a space and started buying equipment. We've grown steadily along with the craft brewing industry and currently employ four people, including a Vanderbilt graduate, Nate Gibbon (see Q&A on the right). So I like to say that I was in the right place at the right time in the right frame of mind.
4. What do you enjoy the most about what you do and why?
A.What I enjoy most about what I do is perusing the craft beer shelves at the local grocery store or bottle shop knowing that many of the beers on those shelves were fermented with yeast that started out in our lab. It's very tangible compared to what I was doing before. And brewers love to share their creations with us so we're regularly given free beer. Can't beat that!
5. What advice would you give new Ph.D. graduates?
A. It sounds cliche, but find something you really love to do and go do it. Have an open mind and see the opportunities when they're presented to you.
- May 13 - MP 2nd Friday Happy Hour. The Kendall and Rollins-Smith labs will be hosting.
- May 31 - MP Division faculty meeting- 3:00pm, room A5305 MCN - Business meeting.
- Congratulations to Dr. Ivelin Georgiev for receiving the VUMC Faculty Research Scholars Award! Get to know Dr. Georgiev a bit more, by reading the piece below.
- Congratulations to Marc Singleton, an undergraduate researcher co-mentored by Dr. Skaar and Dr. Caprioli. Marc Singleton has been selected as the undergraduate chemistry researcher of the year at Vanderbilt University. He also received Highest Honors for his thesis.
- Congratulations to Dr. Joe Zackular from the Skaar Lab. Joereceived the Best Poster Award for the Microbiology & Immunology division.
- A big kudos to all the post-docs from PMI: The postdocs from Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology won an award for having the highest percentage of postdocs participating in the symposium. That $500 award will be given to the department to be used for a postdoc related activity of their choosing! That is a great honor for the department.
- Congratulations to Dr. Ernest Yufenyuy, an alumnus from our department. Ernest was the recipient of the CDC 2016 Innovative Funding Award.
- A record 48 publications featuring commentaries, reviews and primary research have posted on NCBI from faculty in our division since last month's myMP. This is the highest numbrer since the onset of MyMP!If you would like to contribute an article highlight, from your lab or the lab of a colleague within MP, please feel free to email us.
22. Systems immune monitoring in cancer therapy. Greenplate AR, Johnson DB, Ferrell PB Jr, Irish JM. Eur J Cancer. 2016 May 4;61:77-84. doi: 10.1016/j.ejca.2016.03.085. [Epub ahead of print] Review.
Dr. Georgiev received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Duke University. In 2009 he joined the newly formed Structural Bioinformatics Core Section at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) on the main NIH campus in Bethesda, MD, where he served as a staff scientist and co-head until 2015. Dr. Georgiev is now a faculty member at the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center and an Assistant Professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology and of Computer Science at Vanderbilt. Dr. Georgiev works on the development and application of computational methods related to problems in the fields of immunology and virology, with a special emphasis on structure-based vaccine design and antibody analysis and optimization.
Research in the Georgiev laboratory:
Computational analysis of immune responses to infection and vaccination
Next-generation sequencing analysis of human antibody repertoires
Development of antibody therapeutics and vaccines for HIV-1, influenza, RSV, and other pathogens of biomedical significance
Composition of lab:
Suryakala SarillaBennett, lab manager
Nagarajan Raju, postdoctoral fellow
Amyn Murji, PMI graduate student
Ian Setliff, CPB graduate student
Wyatt McDonnell, PMI graduate student (co-mentored with Dr. Simon Mallal)
Summary of selected publication/area of research to highlight:
HIV-1 poses a substantial health and economic burden, with more than 30 million people currently infected worldwide. The search for an effective HIV-1 vaccine remains a top priority, and a deeper understanding of how the immune system recognizes HIV-1 can help inform vaccine design. Lately, much effort has focused on understanding the antibody responses to HIV-1 infection, in order to define epitope-specific templates for vaccine design. However, the polyclonal neutralizing antibody responses in an individual are very complex. Standard methods for mapping such responses include various experimental techniques, but more recently, we led the development of novel mapping methods, called NFP (neutralization fingerprinting), that are based on computational analysis of polyclonal antibody neutralization data [1]. In the three years since its inception, the NFP technology has become widely used in the HIV field. Currently, we are working on developing next-generation NFP technologies that are more accurate, more reliable, and better suited to address important biological questions that can help us gain a deeper understanding of how the immune system recognizes HIV-1, with the goal of providing novel templates for the design of an effective HIV-1 vaccine. We are also actively pursuing the generalization of the NFP technology for other viruses, including influenza and dengue.
[1] Georgiev, I.S., N.A. Doria-Rose, T. Zhou, Y.D. Kwon, R.P. Staupe, S. Moquin, G.Y. Chuang, M.K. Louder, S.D. Schmidt, H.R. Altae-Tran, R.T. Bailer, K. McKee, M. Nason, S. O'Dell, G. Ofek, M. Pancera, S. Srivatsan, L. Shapiro, M. Connors, S.A. Migueles, L. Morris, Y. Nishimura, M.A. Martin, J.R. Mascola, and P.D. Kwong, Delineating antibody recognition in polyclonal sera from patterns of HIV-1 isolate neutralization. Science, 2013. 340(6133): p. 751-6.
A chat with a Vanderbilt Alumnus at Omega Yeast Labs
Nate Gibbon is a Vanderbilt alumnus, currently employed at Omega Yeast Labs.
Q. Introduce yourself: Where did you do biological research in what area of study/whose lab?
A. My name is Nate Gibbon. During my time at Vanderbilt, I conducted undergrad research in Dr. Carl Johnson's lab centered around the role of circadian clock genes in the adaptation of nurses to shift work.
Q. Tell us what you are doing now. How did you get here?
A. I now work as the Production and Quality Control Manager at Omega Yeast Labs. Before this I had helped start up the Lagunitas Brewing facility there. I didn't see much room for advancement, so I went on the brewing classifieds and found my current job.
Q. What do you enjoy the most about what you do and why?
A. Aside from working for Lance, it's a great gig. My job is a mix of commercial production and lab work, so I'm always doing different things. I also get to do a lot of practical experimentation with yeast and fermentation, and we've been at the forefront of several trends in craft brewing. Also, free beer at lunch.
Q. What advice would you give new graduates?
A. When presenting yourself to employers think about what specific skills/value you provide. All the theoretical knowledge and experimental procedures that you've worked very hard to master won't get you hired unless you can demonstrate how they can help that company.
