In June we had the annual O'Toole lab retreat.
Once again, Pete Newell hosted the retreat at his family's
home in Maine. The weather was rainy but the science was great!

Here is Pete presenting..


..and Kyle..


..and Mike.


Also, a cool wildlife spotting. I took this picture of
a moose from my car on the drive up to Maine.

posted by George at 3:26 PM

We recently had a new Ph.D. student join the lab. Dae Gon Ha, pictured here, did his undergraduate studies at Grinnell College in Iowa before coming to Dartmouth. This summer he'll be working on swarming motility in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. One of his swarm plates is also pictured here.


posted by George at 2:43 PM

This past weekend was graduation, and I was fortunate to
have two fantastic students walking this year. Judy Merritt
and Russell Monds. Judy will be starting a biotech post-doc
soon at Glycobia, a new startup in Ithaca, NY. Russell has
been a Bio-X fellow at Stanford for the past several months
and flew cross-country for graduation.

posted by George at 2:32 PM

Some more good news! Greg Anderson, a post-doc in the lab, will be heading off to start his own group. He just accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at IUPIU (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis). He'll continue his work studying host-pathogen interactions using P. aeruginosa biofilms on cystic fibrosis cells as a model system. He'll be heading off soon and we wish him the best of luck.


posted by George at 2:28 PM

Steve Bernier recently joined the lab as a post-doctoral fellow.
He comes to us by way of a Ph.D. at the University of Calgary working with
Dr. Pamela Sokol on studies of Burkholderia cenocepacia. He also spent
two years on a Canadian Foundation Louis Pasteur Postdoctoral Fellowship
working with Dr. Jean-Marc Ghigo at the Institut Pasteur.

posted by George at 2:24 PM

We have had two lab members receive honors recently.

Alicia Ballok was awarded a slot on our NIH-funded Immunology Training Grant.


Chelsea Boyd was appointed to our NIH-funded Molecular Pathogenesis Training Grant.
She also received an Honorable Mention award for her NSF Graduate Fellowship Application.

posted by George at 1:58 PM

Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, Tamilnadu in India has grown from a small clinic in the 1976 to arguably the largest eye hospital in the world and one of the most successful in providing high quality eye care to patients in a developing country setting. 60% of patients receive free medical care. Aravind's accomplishments were recognized by their selections for the Gates Foundation Award for Global Health in 2008. While providing primary eye care to patients Aravind has also made a major committment to clinical and basic research. During their visit to Aravind, two members of the O'Toole lab, Kyle Cady and Michael Zegans worked with staff at the Aravind Medical Research Foundation to look at CRISPR genes in Pseudomonas isolates from corneal infections.

Here is Kyle giving a lecture..

...and with with Dr. Lalitha, the head of the microbiology group.


And a group photo with the Aravind PhD students.
In the center of the photo is Dr. Muthukkaruppan,
the director of Research for the Aravind Medical
Research Foundation


To learn more about Aravind, check out this link:
http://www.aravind.org/aboutus/index.asp
posted by George at 11:02 AM

I am bit late in posting this news, but Judy Merritt recently defended and is now a Ph.D. She is still working in the lab but is currently looking for post-docs.

As you can see here, Judy's name is up in lights!


posted by George at 11:07 AM

In mid-May we had our annual lab retreat. I am a little slow in posting pictures!

Once again, we held the retreat up in Maine thanks to the generosity
of the Newell Family and Pete Newell, a Ph.D. student in the lab.

It was a really fun and productive retreat. As part of the presentations
we usually do some career development activities. This year,
two soon-to-be-post docs in the lab, Russell Monds and Dan MacEachran,
talked about their experiences looking for a post-doc.



posted by George at 2:44 PM

We've have several new additions to the lab this year.

Alicia Ballok (L) and Chelsea Boyd are two new Ph.D. students
who joined the lab in June. They'll be spending the summer
working on a couple of different projects each.


The Emilys, Emily Trentacoste (L) and Emily Summers are
Dartmouth College undergraduates who worked in the lab
the past school year and are also working here over the summer.


Mike Danziger is a high school student from St. Anne's
School in NYC. He is the student of a former student of mine,
JP Connolly.


And Katrina Mateo is spending the summer in the lab
as part of the SURF summer research program. She
is a Vassar College student.

posted by George at 1:46 PM

A couple members of the lab went down to the ASM meeting in Boston. We had the opportunity for a nice lab dinner with current and former members of the group. We got together for a traditional New England lobster boil. Very fun!


posted by George at 3:16 PM

Russell Monds is now Dr. Monds. He defended his thesis last week. He's spent the past few years studying the role of phosphate in the regulation of biofilm formation by Pseudomonas fluorescens. His outside examiner was Dr. Jack Heinemann who came all the way from New Zealand.

Russell will be heading off to Stanford as a BioX fellow (http://biox.stanford.edu/) later this summer.





Here are Russell, Mark Silby (another Kiwi, currently in Boston) and Jack.


posted by George at 2:57 PM

Dan MacEachran successfully defended his Ph.D. last week.
Here he is giving his defense talk with the structure of his favorite
protein behind him. Our thanks to Marvin Whiteley, his outside examiner.

Dan is off to MIT in a month or so to do a post-doc with Anthony Sinskey.


posted by George at 9:10 AM

A recent paper published in Infection and Immunity by Greg Anderson, a post-doc in the lab, along with Sophie Marquis who is a post-doc with Bruce Stanton in the Department of Physiology here at Dartmouth Medical School, was selected as a "SpotLight" article. The work describes a new model system for studying biofilms grown on airway cells. The work is highlighted at Dartmouth's website today.


Greg Anderson, Ph.D.

Check out the paper is here.



posted by George at 11:18 AM

Kyle Cady, a second year Ph.D. student in the lab was just awarded a slot on the Molecular Pathogenesis Training Grant. Congrats!


posted by George at 5:08 PM