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JCVI Scientists Recognized by ASM
Drs. Karen E. Nelson and Kenneth H. Nealson are both being recognized by the American Academy of Microbiology (ASM) tomorrow, May 26, 2010. Karen has been elected to Fellowship in the ASM. She is one of seventy-eight new members that have been selected through a peer-review process based on her contributions to microbiology. Karen is currently the Director of JCVI’s Rockville, Maryland Campus and leads the Genomic Medicine Group. Most recently she, along with JCVI staff and in conjunction...
Scientist Spotlight: Hamilton O. Smith and Clyde A. Hutchison III
Editor’s note: Clyde Hutchison died on September 27, 2025. Less than a month later, Hamilton Smith died on October 25, 2025. This post memorializes their dear friendship and the quest to construct the first bacterium with a synthetic genome in 2010. Their friendship endured and their work continued, realizing the goal of building the first minimized genome, JCVI-syn3.0, now used as a model organism worldwide. They were both active in moving science forward until shortly before their...
Having Fun with Genomics
I am the generation after landing on the moon. As a child, I don’t recall having any science inspiration. I was fortunate to have parents that made it possible for me and my siblings to get a very good education. I went to a small parochial school outside of Washington, DC. It was a great school but we had no labs and so my exposure to science was limited at best. I always liked school and did well, especially in math. Then I went to Elizabeth Seton High School and had a bumpy road...
AGBT, Marco Island 2010
I just got back from AGBT in Marco Island, Florida and I am still in awe. As noted in the name, this conference highlights advances in both genome biology and technology. The biology seemed to be very human genome centric. Many of the talks presented full genome sequences of cancer genomes or familial cohorts. Some of the numbers that people threw around were shocking. It was only a short time ago that Craig Venter came out with the first personal genome, and now sequencing centers like...
High Impact Science in Antarctica
Big changes in store for the Mertz Polynya: in February 2010 iceberg 9B9 collided with the Mertz Glacier, breaking the 70 km floating glacier off at the base. The Mertz Polynya was extensivley sampled by scientists at the JCVI in the summer of 2007/08, and this metagenomic survey will form an important baseline for evaluating on-going changes in the area.
Science Festivals
With spring around the corner (or at least we hope), there are several upcoming science festivals. These festivals are designed to provide students and families opportunities to find out what is happening in local science research institutes, universities and companies. These organizations are expanding the text books beyond our imaginations. These are EXCITING times in science – we are just scratching the surface of understanding the diversity of life on our planet, beginning to understand...
2010 Internship Program Ready to Go
Are you thinking about summer already? We are!! The 2010 Summer Internship Program is open to accept applications. Last year, we received and reviewed over 300 applications from all over the US and the world for our summer program. Interns were selected to work in most of the research groups throughout the Institute: 18 interns were selected in San Diego and 37 selected in Maryland. 2009 Maryland Summer Interns Some of the projects interns worked on were the...
Scientist Spotlight: Karen Nelson
Karen’s interest in the natural world was sparked at a young age. Born in Jamaica, she enjoyed the outdoors and wonders of nature. Karen was drawn to animals and wanted to become a veterinarian, but after taking some human and animal nutrition courses in college she was hooked on microbiology. Karen received her B.Sc. in Animal Science from the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago, her M.Sc. in Animal Science from the University of Florida, Gainesville, and her PhD in...
Antarctic Epiblog: Leaving McMurdo
Ice formation outside McMurdo Station After we took our samples out at the ice edge, we returned to McMurdo Station for several intense days of demobilization. We had to return all of the large drills, power equipment and camping gear, and spent a considerable time preparing our own gear for shipment back to the United States. Our samples and some of our critical gear will go by air transport to Port Huemene in California, and the rest will be shipped back to the US by icebreaker during...
McMurdo Sound
It took another day for the storm to blow itself out, but by Tuesday the wind and driving snow had abated, and we drove our Pisten Bully back out to our temporary shelter near Cape Evans. It took several hours of digging to clear the snow away from our vehicles, but once we started driving away from the hut we quickly ran into another problem: the snow was so Jeff McQuaid using a Kovacs drill to obtain an ice core deep that our sleds and vehicles would bog down in the snowdrifts....