Happy October to everyone! With the weather getting cooler (some days), the leaves starting to change, and campus buzzing with student activities, it's a great time to be at Vanderbilt! It's also a great time to think about your reach beyond our campus and how that can affect both your research and your career.

Our Division is home to some of the most exciting basic science research in the world right now, and discoveries made here will have lasting effects on human health for decades. We should all be extremely proud of the work we do and a little shameless self-promotion can have a meaningful impact on research funding, recruitment, and scientific reputation. With this in mind, over the next few months we will highlight ways to take your outreach and engagement to the next level, starting here at home.

As we announced in August, our new websites (both Department and Division) are designed to show off the amazing research of our faculty and trainees. Because we’re part of a large community like Vanderbilt, one can easily find the dotted line between the research we do and related patient outcomes. All faculty could have one or many profiles, depending on their affiliations within Vanderbilt, but the main one will be here and some departments pull from that to update other profiles. That is not the case for PMI, as we have taken extra steps to fill profiles, using info from varied sources. That said, only you can prevent inaccuracies and stale info because you know yourself better than anyone. Your PMI profile is one of the most accessible ways to craft your reputation narrative and is simple to update with a quick email to James. You're encouraged to embed videos and other visual content, link to relevant websites and publications, and make the case for your research in your own words. Check your profiles and see if you’re being properly represented, both in PMI and elsewhere. Also, the MP homepage is designed to highlight our work - don’t hesitate to request a feature there; James wants to hear from you!

...to the following students in the Microbe-Host Interactions Program for receiving awards:

Wyatt McDonnell (Mallal Lab): received the inaugural Young Investigator award at the 9th International HIV & Aging Workshop in New York City. His work examining T cell subsets associated with mortality in HIV+ and HIV− veterans was selected for an oral presentation as part of the award.

Reece Knippel (Skaar Lab): received a VICB Symposium Poster Award in the Molecular Discovery category for his poster entitled: “Mechanism and Function of Heme Sensing and Detoxification in Clostridium difficile.”

Laura Hesse (Skaar Lab): received a VICB Symposium Poster Award in the Molecular Discovery category for her poster entitled: “Acinetobacter baumannii Utilizes Znu Systems to Acquire Zinc During Host-Imposed Nutrient Limitation."

Congratulations to the Rollins-Smith Lab for being invited to participate in NSF Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) Grant looking at the immune defenses of the salamanders affected by Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, or Bsal, an emerging pathogen affecting amphibians. Read more here.

Congratulations to the James E. Cassat, M.D., Ph.D. for being recognized by the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society wit the 2018 PIDS Young Investigator Award!