We were delighted that Radio New Zealand's Jesse Mulligan interviewed Mercedes about our charity. You can listen here: https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018717285/mentor-programme-for-disadvantaged-kids
I'm delighted to have taken over as director of Massey's Infectious Disease Research Centre after Nigel French. You can find more on the virtual centre here.
Paul joins the group after doing his BSc and MRes at the The University of Glasgow, with research on oxidative stress in C. elegans then in D. melanogaster, followed by an MSc in Synthetic Biology at Newcastle University. You can see more here.
You can find out more about bats and our work on them at this new website https://www.science4bats.org/
The NZ Herald ran a feature on the work contained in my recently awarded Rutherford Discovery Fellowship which you can find here.
I was privileged to be awarded a 5 year mid-career Rutherford Discovery Fellowship by the Royal Society of New Zealand. You can read more here
We just published the local New Zealand and global genetic diversity of Cryptosporidium and Giardia genotypes in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases here.
Juan Carlos Garcia Ramirez and I have now twice received 'Editor's paper of the issue' in less than 12 months for work on the co-speciation and evolution of Cryptosporidium. This time it is for the paper titled "Evolutionary processes in populations of Cryptosporidium inferred from gp60 sequence data" in Parasitology Research. Please check it out in issue Volume 116, Issue 7, pp 1855–1861: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00436-0...
Our new paper is out in Methods in Ecology and Evolution on long-term video surveillance using infrared camera and automated analyses that reveal arousal patterns in groups of hibernating bats. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-21...
MentorEd: My wife and I launched a new charity with a friend that aim to boost confidence and achievement in the most disadvantaged kids in NZ. Please check out the website to read more about it http://mentored.org.nz/
New analyses support there being a link between forest fragmentation in Africa and Ebola virus disease outbreaks. This work was led by Cristina Rulli and published in Scientific Reports.
A Perspective in Science highlighting the great work by Daniel Streicker at Glasgow as well as other recent advances in our knowledge regarding bats as viral reservoirs.
Our new research is the first to address the 'Out of Africa' hypothesis for the origin of lyssaviruses, the most famous of which is rabies virus. We found support for a Paleartic origin. See more in PLoS NTD.
Juan Carlos' paper, Origin of a major infectious disease in vertebrates: The timing of Cryptosporidium evolution and its hosts, was Parasitology Editor's 'Paper of the Month'.
Origin of a major infectious disease in vertebrates. This analysis led by Juan Carlos Garcia Ramirez uses calibrated molecular clocks and cophylogeny to estimate the timing of Cryptosporidium evolution and its hosts, published in Parasitology.
New review of bats as hosts of viruses published in Annual Review of Virology.
New research with Ali Peel tested whether we could use survival analyses from heavily hunted, but pandemic, species to detect hunting pressure published in Conservation Biology.
New analyses led by Barbara Han to identify undiscovered filovirus hosts, including those of Ebola virus, published in PLoS NTD.
We have a two year postdoctoral fellowship available in our group to work on antimicrobial resistance: http://massey-careers.massey.ac.nz/9178/postdoctor...