December 2011 Go back to top
Our new paper in Biology Letters (
) is highlighted in Nature News.
October 2011 Go back to top
Rob Anderson continued with us for a couple of months following his PhD graduation in the summer but he has now taken up a new postdoc position with David Hughes.
And we are delighted that Lauren Cator (from Cornell) has changed team-colors, and is now a new Penn State postdoc in our lab!
September 2011 Go back to top
Grad students Lillian Moller-Jacobs and Naworaj Acharya join the lab. Lillian is interested in researching how environmental factors influence aspects of mosquito immune function and Raj is continuing our research exploring the potential for using fungal entomopathogens for control of houseflies. Very happy to have them.
June 2011 Go back to top
Congratulations to Rob Anderson and Chen Shi for passing their PhD defenses.
We received a new NIH-NIAID R21 grant to investigate the effects of environmental temperature on mosquito immune function. This grant will support Courtney Murdock for the next couple of years and complements very well our other research on effects of temperature on various aspects of mosquito and malaria parasite biology.
In case this fell under the radar, we are also partners in one of the new NIH-funded International Centers of Excellence for Malaria Research (ICEMRs) focusing on complex malaria in India. Should be more info on this to follow but for now see this website.
April 2011 Go back to top
New paper in PNAS () extends our earlier work on malaria and reveals that daily temperature variation could play a role in the dynamics of dengue transmission. The study, which was led by Louis Lambrechts and Tom Scott, forms part of our collaborative NSF-EID grant. See attached link for UC Davis press release.
January 2011 Go back to top
New article highlights growing strength in malaria research at Penn State ().
December 2010 Go back to top
Penn State Press Release on new paper just published in Nature Communications ().
August 2010 Go back to top
A new paper in PNAS (
) shows that daily variations in temperature do not only alter malaria parasite development (see ), but all the entomological parameters that combine to determine malaria risk.
Other stuff………
Bad news – Wangpeng Shi and Bill Snyder have finished their sabbaticals with us and returned to their respective host institutions. It was great to have them here over the last year and they will be missed.
Good news – Courtney got married, Krijn recently became a dad and Rob just became a dad too – it’s a real ‘love fest’ in our lab – must be something in the water!
June 2010 Go back to top
Andrew Read and Matt Thomas receive two new grants to further explore the potential for developing ‘Late Life Acting’ insecticide interventions for adult mosquito control. One (an R21 funded by the NIH) aims to evaluate the extent to which lower doses of currently available conventional insecticides could reduce the selection pressure for evolution of insecticide resistance but still provide effective malaria control. The second (funded by the Innovative Vector Control Consortium) aims to evaluate the persistence of fungal biopesticides on a range of substrates that might be treated in indoor residual spray (IRS) applications in a typical African house.
February 2010 Go back to top
Brief articles (1, 2 and 3) in Scientific American highlighting our NSF award.
November 2009 Go back to top
We’re delighted that Bill Snyder from Washington State University and Wang-Peng Shi from China Agricultural University are joining us on sabbatical for the year.
October 2009 Go back to top
Interesting news article in the The Scientist reporting on some of our work and discussing the broader issues around evolution-proof malaria control
September 2009 Go back to top
New paper in PNAS () shows that fungal spores can effectively infect and kill malaria mosquitoes, even those that are resistant to pesticides, and that mosquitoes become more susceptible to the pesticides as the fungal infection increases. These results suggest the potential for using fungal biopesticides in novel strategies for insecticide-resistance management.
August 2009 Go back to top
New paper in PNAS () shows that daytime temperature fluctuations could greatly alter the incubation period of malaria parasites in mosquitoes and therefore transmission rates of the disease. See press release by PSU and the commentary on our paper by Pascual et al.
News-article by EnvironmentalResearchWeb
News-article by ArsTechnica
July 2009 Go back to top
Substantial four year grant awarded by The National Science Foundation, Ecology of Infectious Diseases Program. The project, entitled “Quantifying the influence of environmental temperature on transmission of vector-borne diseases”, is under the direction of Matt Thomas, Andrew Read, Michael Mann, Robert Crane (PSU) and Tom Scott (UC Davis).
May 2009 Go back to top
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a Grand Challenges Explorations Grant to Tom Baker, Matt Thomas and Andrew Read to study the potential to infect malaria-carrying mosquitoes with a fungus that – like a head cold – suppresses their sense of smell and their ability to find human hosts.
April 2009 Go back to top
New paper in PLoS Biology () identifies potential for evolution proof malaria control. See press release by PSU and the associated web cast.
Check Matt’s interview with Hannah Hoag on CKUT radio here.
March 2009 Go back to top
Large parts of Matt’s press-conference at the AAAS meeting in Chicago can be heard on ABC radio
Our press-release is picked up by various blogs, e.g. ScienceDaily
