It's nearly Halloween

Fall is always a pretty season in Madison. The trees change colors, there is a cool breeze in the air, and we know that winter is just around the corner. October also is one of our busiest months of the year, along with February. I don’t know why these months are so busy, but year after year they are.

News from the lab:

1) Ann Detmer and Kevin Campbell submitted a manuscript to Immunogenetics

2) Melisa Budde, Dawn Dudley, and Justin Greene are writing applications to the Gates Grand Challenges in Global Health program.

3) Ben Burwitz, Ben Bimber, and Justin Greene applied for Vilas Travel Grants to subsidize their attendance at the 26th Annual Nonhuman Primate Models for AIDS meeting in December.

4) I applied for a Burroughs Wellcome New Investigators in Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases fellowship.

5) I served on an NIH study section earlier this week, requiring me to spend my first night away from my 7 week old son Eli. Shelby has been spending lots of time with Eli, but still found time to help with lab sequence analysis and teaching.

6) The HIV/AIDS course for undergraduates that I team teach with Tom Friedrich, Shelby, and other members of our laboratories is in full swing. For the first time, we are podcasting the audio/video of the class to the students.

7) We’re busy with multiple ambitious experiments on a number of different genetics and virology projects. I’m going to be presenting the genetics data in Miami next month, while Roger Wiseman is presenting some of the same data today at the Association for Molecular Pathology meeting in Dallas.

The Newest Lab Member

September has flown by, assisted by the birth of our son Eli Jamie O’Connor, who came into this world at a happy and healthy 6 lb. 14 oz. The early weeks of his life are chronicled at his blog, but we would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has provided congratulations and support. Members of the lab have been terrific, accommodating our time away from work and even helping with some of our non-work needs (thanks for the food Roger and Mari!) While we’ve been gone, the lab hasn’t stopped. Some of our September highlights include:

1) Ben Bimber’s manuscript on KIR immunogenetics was accepted for publication by the Journal of Immunology.

2) Justin Greene gave a presentation on adoptive transfer at the NIH’s AIDS Vaccine Research Subcommittee.

3) Roger Wiseman visited New Haven, CT for a 454/Roche Sequencer User Group meeting.

4) Ann Detmer and Kevin Campbell finished preparing a manuscript for submission to Immunogenetics.

5) Ben Burwitz prepared a manuscript for submission to the Journal of Immunology.

6) I began preparing for an October NIH study section.

7) We taught the first month of our HIV/AIDS course to approximately 80 undergraduates at UW-Madison.

Labor Daze

Howdy all. An exciting few weeks as we lead into Labor Day. Roger will soon be going to New Haven for a conference and has been busy making a poster. Ben Burwitz passed his prelim B yesterday, making him our lab’s fourth dissertator. We have two manuscripts in the submission stage, so it has been busy around here...

Not to mention that Shelby is due to deliver the lab’s first baby boy any day now. Updates to the website will probably become less frequent, unless I start posting pictures. In which case they will probably become annoyingly frequent.

Crutching

The past two weeks have been interesting. Last Tuesday I sprained my ankle badly playing basketball. Today, nearly two weeks later, is the first day that I can hobble around without an aircast. For the first week after the injury, I was on crutches. Unfortunately, the injury came two days before a trip to New York (to visit IAVI) and Washington D.C. (to visit NIAID). Navigating the Northeast on cructhes isn’t very much fun.

But while I was gone, there was lots of activity in the lab. Ben Bimber’s manuscript on killer immunoglobulin receptors in macaques received a very favorable review. Chad Pendley departed the lab to start medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin, while Alex Blasky left to start a PhD program at the University of Colorado-Denver. Very soon, their replacements Ann Detmer and Jen Tuscher will arrive. Now we await the start of the academic year that will coincide with Shelby’s due date. Managing the responsibilities of lab with the responsibilities of parenthood promises to be interesting.