Global Viral news, developments & press (archived)
GV fellows win awards at Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomics Conference
September 2018
Is it a sweep? Well almost! CONGRATS to Jessica and Jean-Marie for winning second and third place awards (respectively) for their posters at the Lake Arrowhead Genomics Conference (LAMG)! Go team GV!
GV welcomes junior fellows at San Francisco State University
August 2018
Global Viral is pleased to announce the selection of Rachna Pannu, Madison Bullock and Wilmer Amaya-Mejia as GV junior fellows at San Francisco State University. The fellows will work on projects related to the Boundaries of Life initiative. Student profiles will be posted soon. Welcome aboard!
Collaborative work starts with the Joint Genome Institute
June-July 2018
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GV Fellows Tomas Tyml and Jean-Marie Volland start work at the Joint Genome Institute, under the co-supervision of Drs. Date and Woyke
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Dr. Lee wins NSF award
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GV begins BD efforts with collaborators from Metabiota
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GV is growing and will be announcing other appointments soon!
GV warmly welcomes Dr. Bradford Brooks to the team! Dr. Brooks has extensive experience both in public health issues and oncology, and will help drive business development and other scientific areas within GV.
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Go team GV!!
Bradford Brooks joins GV as Senior Scientist
New developments galore! Details to follow over coming weeks
April 2018
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Three new scientists to join GV team
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GV initiates two new collaborative projects with the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and NASA/JPL
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Former GV Fellow and Boundaries of Life team member Kevin Freedman wins Human Frontiers Science Program new investigator grant award
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GV initiates partnership with San Francisco State University (SFSU)
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GV sponsors three two-year student scholarships at SFSU as part of the Boundaries of Life initiative to train the next generation of scientists
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GV hosts first BoL Phase II workshop in San Francisco
Jessica Lee joins Global Viral as GV Fellow
March 2018
The GV team is thrilled to welcome Dr. Jessica Lee as GV Fellow. Dr. Lee is the first of a new crop of scientists expected to start their careers at GV in 2018. Details to follow.
GV prepares to start Boundaries of Life Phase II work
October-November 2017
Global Viral is pleased to announce commencement of work on Phase II of the Boundaries of Life project, together with collaborators from Stanford, Caltech, the Joint Genome Institute (JGI, DoE) and NASA/JPL. More information about the Boundaries of Life project is available here: https://www.globalviral.org/all-global-programs
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Hiring: The BoL team at GV is looking to hire up to three postdoctoral researchers. More information is posted here: https://www.globalviral.org/careers
GV's summer of success!!
(July - Sept.) Summer 2017
The Global Viral team accomplished quite a few things this summer! A few highlights:
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The team collected samples from cooling lava flows from Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park. These samples will be analyzed for first colonizers
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The Boundaries of Life team was thrilled to know that funding would continue for Phase II of the project.
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Dr. Freedman submitted his first independent grant and started his new lab
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GV is also expected to announce up to three open positions for 2018, working with the boundaries of life project through various institutions (JGI, NASA/JPL, etc.). Do visit us again soon as we post details.
GV & collaborators featured in news and views
March 2017
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GV welcomes two new visiting scientists
Jan-Feb 2017
GV is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Armando Azua-Bustos and Dr. Tanja Woyke as Visiting Scientists. Both scientists bring a tremendous amount of knowledge, creativity and passion for biodiversity research in extreme environments. More information about the two scientists will be available soon on their profile pages.
Dr. Azua-Bustos is a research scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute with focus on life in xeric environments. Dr. Woyke leads the Microbial Genomics program at the Joint Genome Institute (LBL, Dept. of Energy) and is a pioneer in developing state-of-art techniques for investigating composition and genomics of microbial communities.
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Welcome Armando and Tanja!
GV completes environmental sampling of extreme 'dry' environments
December 2016
The GV team has completed sampling from two extreme dry environments on earth - The Atacama Dessert in Chile and Death Valley National Park in California. Both areas receive extremely low amounts of rainfall throughout the year, which forces plants, animals and microbes to adapt to the xeric conditions in interesting ways. The team hopes to identify novel biochemistry in microbes through the analysis of soil samples obtained from the two regions. And yes, the surface does look like that of Mars!
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Many thanks to our collaborator Dr. Armando Azua-Bustos for guiding the GV team during sample collection.
Boundaries of Life project advisor Victoria Orphan named MacArthur Fellow
Dr. Victoria Orphan, James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science and Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and an advisor to GV's Boundaries of Life project, has been named a MacArthur Fellow for 2016. The fellowships, commonly referred to in the popular press as 'Genius Awards', are given out as unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.
Read the announcement here: https://www.macfound.org/fellows/964/
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Press coverage of the announcement in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/arts/macarthur-foundations-genius-fellows-2016.html
GV-JGI scientific teams successfully complete pilot sampling of extreme environments in the Mammoth and Mono Lakes region
May 2016
Members of the Boundaries of life team, in collaboration with the research groups from the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), successfully completed a sample collection tour in Mono Lake area. Mono lake is known for its hypersaline water and is likely to harbor life forms that are uniquely suited to survival in the highly saline environment. The teams also collected samples from hot springs and other water bodies in the surrounding region. The samples will be analyzed by the Boundaries of Life team and scientists at the JGI.
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Welcome Aboard! GV welcomes new team members!
April 2016
We welcome Lisa Diamond and Ashley Allen to GV. Lisa will serve as Principal Systems Architect and Ashley as Senior Systems Architect, and will help GV build and maintain computational resources.