Job posting: Tenure-Track Faculty Position in Environmental Microbiology at Virginia Tech

Job Posting:   The Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Virginia Tech invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position in environmental engineering at the rank of Assistant Professor. We are seeking candidates motivated to contribute to a collegial, interdisciplinary community in several core mission areas of the university. The …

Wanted: Workers for the COVID19 Mass Testing Operations for UC Davis and Healthy Davis Together 

Wanted: Workers for the COVID19 Mass Testing Operations for UC Davis and Healthy Davis Together  Looking for a temporary job in the Davis/Sacramento area and want to help with COVID19 testing? See below. Needed right now “Mass Screening Kiosk Workers” to assist with operations at the site where people come in to provide saliva samples …

Open Postdoc Position at University of Oregon BioBE

The Biology and the Built Environment Center (BioBE) is currently seeking a post-doc to investigate fundamental questions surrounding the role of microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi archaea, and protists) in the built environment and in relation to human health outcomes. Learn more and apply here. (https://careers.uoregon.edu/en-us/job/527294/post-doctoral-scholar-in-microbial-ecology)

Compilation of guidance (from a few sources) on School Reopening

About a month ago I posted a request for information about guidance for school reopening. See the post here: https://microbe.net/2021/02/06/compiling-information-about-covid19-transmission-masks-filtration-schools-etc/ I spent a while looking at the responses and also soliciting some more and ended up with a few really good documents / sites with information about school reopening.  These are Schools for Health. From …

Compiling Information about COVID19 transmission, masks, filtration, schools, etc.

UPDATE March 24, 2021. Wrote a summary post here: https://microbe.net/2021/03/24/compilation-of-guidance-from-a-few-sources-on-school-reopening/    Trying to collect some of the various information about COVID19 transmission and related topics including masks, schools, CO2, variants, etc. Mostly from Twitter threads and News articles Masks Wall Street Journal: Double Face Masks? N95? Protect Yourself Against New Covid-19 Variants With These Mask …

Wanted – science driven guidelines for deciding if and how to keep open / reopen schools re: #COVID19

I am compiling some materials on science driven guidelines for how to decide if and how to keep open and/or reopen schools in the face of COVID19. Here are some I have compiled that I seem to be useful.  I would love other examples. (Updated 12/21 at 3 PM) National Academy of Sciences Reopening K-12 …

#COVID19 Journal Club “Evidence of Long-Distance Droplet Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by Direct Air Flow in a Restaurant in Korea”

This one has been getting a lot of popular media attention… and really the title says it all “Evidence of Long-Distance Droplet Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by Direct Air Flow in a Restaurant in Korea”.  This study describes a transmission that took place at over 20 feet in only 5 minutes… both problematic considering the standard …

#COVID19 Preprint Journal Club: “Wastewater Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 as a Predictive Metric of Positivity Rate for a Major Metropolis”

More wastewater sampling work, “Wastewater Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 as a Predictive Metric of Positivity Rate for a Major Metropolis“.  This one is a larger-scale study in a big city that found wastewater spikes in SARS-CoV-2 to present clinical positives by 2 weeks which is a huge lead time and of major significance for getting a …

#COVID19 Preprint Journal Club: “Distribution of SARS-CoV-2 RNA Signal in a Home with COVID-19 Positive Occupants”

A nice article by several of our colleagues from the MoBE project days.   “Distribution of SARS-CoV-2 RNA Signal in a Home with COVID-19 Positive Occupants” does just what it says in the tile, looks at the signal from SARS-CoV-2 in a home… long after the occupants were determined positive.   They sampled two months after the …

#COVID-19 Journal Club: “The wastewater microbiome: A novel insight for COVID-19 surveillance”

This is a bit more up our alley!  “The wastewater microbiome: A novel insight for COVID-19 surveillance” doesn’t look directly at the virus but at the changes in the wastewater microbiome that might proceed detection of SARS-CoV-2.  The authors claim to observe such changes which could potentially be really useful.  We already know that wastewater …