Abstracts for MetaSUB 2016 Meeting in Shanghai, China

Urban Metagenomics International Meeting Coming Soon! We are accepting abstracts and poster proposals for the 2016 MetaSUB Consortium Meeting (Metagenomics and Metadesign of Subways and Urban Biomes) until May 30. For details, please see our EventBrite Page here. The meeting takes place at Fudan University in Shanghai, China on July 1-2. Registration for the International …

MoBE Early Career Workshop

Last week, Melissa Dsouza and Jack Gilbert at the University of Chicago hosted a Sloan sponsored MoBE Early Career Workshop. I had the pleasure of attending this well organized event and was inspired by this highly intelligent and motivated group of scientists. The future for the MoBE is bright indeed if these scientists are able to find jobs …

Worth a Read: Sloan Foundation President Dr. Paul Joskow on “Research Integrity and Reproducibility”

I just got pointed to this letter written by the President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Paul Joskow on “Research Integrity and Reproducibility” and it is definitely worth a read. It is available as part of the Sloan Foundation 2014 Annual report. It starts on pXiii.  It is also available via Research Gate.  And …

Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunity: Microbiology of the Built Environment

(posted on behalf of Paula Olsiewski and the Sloan Foundation) The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announces a funding opportunity in its Microbiology of the Built Environment (MoBE) program.   The Foundation seeks to further the development of talented early stage Ph.D. scientists and engineers through the Microbiology of the Built Environment (MoBE) Postdoctoral Fellowship program.  …

From Watersheds to Shower Heads: A Workshop on Legionella Research and Policy

Legionellosis has emerged as a major public health threat related to the built environment, and outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease in New York City and Flint, Michigan in 2015 have drawn increased attention to the problem. Cases reported to CDC have increased more than four-fold since 2000 with over 5000 cases reported in 2015; almost all …

Videos of talks from “Microbiomes of the Built Environment: From Research to Application”

On April 11 there was a meeting in Washington DC that was part of an effort from a new study being conducted by the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering on “Microbiomes of the Built Environment”.  Videos and slides from the meeting have now been posted.  I have compiled them below. In addition, I …

Don’t Cry. Don’t Raise Your Eye. It’s Only Microbe Wasteland

These will almost certainly be of interest to the MoBE community.  There is a new paper in mSystems “Geography and Location Are the Primary Drivers of Office Microbiome Composition” by John Chase, Jennifer Fouquier, Mahnaz Zare, Derek L. Sonderegger, Rob Knight, Scott T. Kelley, Jeffrey Siegel, J. Gregory Caporaso.  I found out about the paper via …

Next Phase of Sloan Plumbing Microbiome Journey! Brain-eating Amoebae and Recycled Water

Sloan has just renewed our funding to build on our foundational research at Virginia Tech that has established general factors broadly shaping the composition of the premise plumbing microbiome!  In this next phase we will focus on shifts in water chemistry and temperature, using brain-eating amoebae as a key exemplar (need to protect those brains!).  …

Organizing 2017 MoBE conference, call for community input

We are kicking off planning for a two day fall 2017 MoBE meeting in Washington, DC to promote and celebrate the scientific achievements of the MoBE project. The MoBE 2017 meeting will engage the broader research and governmental community to champion the scientific endeavors of the MoBE program, highlighting scientific achievements and novel understandings gained …

Sloan Microbiology of the Built Environment Data Analysis Workshop (secrets of QIIME, VAMPS and QIITA) April 4-5, 2016 University of California, San Diego

We are excited because the response to the announcement of the workshop has been awesome! We are expecting approximately 30 grad students and post docs visiting from a wide range of esteemed institutions who besides getting to enjoy sunny San Diego will be getting hands-on training on the secrets of QIIME, VAMPS, and QIITA. To …