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Events Calendar: Past Events

You are currently viewing a list of Levy CIMAR events that have already taken place. You can find our upcoming events by clicking here. If you’d like to read articles about some of our past events, please scroll down or click here.

 

“Genomic Epidemiology and Evolution of Drug Resistance in Candida auris” — Brown University’s Christina Cuomo, PhD

Date: March 28, 2024
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location: Hybrid: In-Person and Zoom (Audience limited to Tufts Members and Affiliates; please contact CIMAR@tufts.edu for more details.)
Levy CIMAR Science Lunch

Please join us for a seminar from Brown University’s Christina Cuomo, PhD, a Professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology who works to identify mechanisms of virulence and drug resistance that can be used to guide and refine treatment decisions. Dr. Cuomo will present on “Genomic Epidemiology and Evolution of Drug Resistance in Candida auris” on Thursday, March 28th, at 12 noon both in person and by Zoom (details to come).

Dr. Cuomo and team utilize genomic approaches to study the evolution of human fungal pathogenic species, taking comparative, population genomic, and microevolutionary approaches to identify genes and variants associated with phenotypes linked to virulence and drug resistance and to characterize how genome structure evolves.

Dr. Cuomo is also the Director of the Fungal Genomics Group and Associate Director in the Genomic Center for Infectious Diseases at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Cuomo’s work at the Broad has led to major insights into the unique features of pathogenic species, how genomes evolve, variation with pathogen populations, antifungal drug resistance, and genes involved in host interaction.

You can learn more about her research here and here.

“The Intersection of Racism, Antimicrobial Resistance, and Vaccine Equity” — UC San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences’ Jacinda Abdul-Mutakabbir, PharmD, MPH, AAHIVP

Date: February 29, 2024
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location: Hybrid: In-Person and Zoom (Audience limited to Tufts Members and Affiliates; please contact CIMAR@tufts.edu for more details.)
Levy CIMAR Science Lunch

We are excited to announce that Jacinda Abdul-Mutakabbir, PharmD, MPH, AAHIVP will present on “The Intersection of Racism, Antimicrobial Resistance, and Vaccine Equity” for a Black History Month seminar sponsored jointly by Micro DEI, the Levy CIMAR, and the Tufts Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. This talk will take place on Thursday, February 29th, 2024 at 12 Noon both in person and by Zoom (details to come). 

Among her many titles, Dr. Abdul-Mutakabbir is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at UC San Diego’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and in the Division of the Black Diaspora and African American Studies. Her research in mitigating antimicrobial resistance has led her to be recognized by the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases as one of their 30 under 30 outstanding young scientists, for their ECCMID 2021 31st annual meeting.  She is also dedicated to magnifying and rectifying health inequities in minoritized communities. To that point, she currently serves as the Lead Pharmacist and Educator for Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement-Health Equity Collaborative and was the 2023 recipient of the Infectious Disease Society of American Clinical Practice Innovation Award.

Dr. Abdul-Mutakabbir’s talk will provide an overview of health equity principles, inequities observed in AMR, and the link to vaccine inequities.She will explore a framework on how to incorporate equity into different facets of practice, both within and outside of the realm of infectious diseases practice.

You can learn more about Dr. Abdul-Mutakabbir here. You can also download a flyer for the event here. The event’s hosts are Aimee Shen, PhD, PhD Candidate Adrianne Gladden-Young, and Micro DEI.

Our December 14th Levy CIMAR Science Seminar will explore antimicrobial resistance from both clinical and basic science perspectives. We will hear from two speakers this month: Tufts Medical Center’s Kap Sum Foong, MD, an Attending Physician with expertise in antimicrobial stewardship and infection control, and Juan Hernandez-Bird, a PhD candidate in the laboratory of CIMAR’s Ralph Isberg, PhD, studying how the bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii evolves antibiotic resistance. Please join us on Thursday, December 14th, at 12 noon in Behrakis Auditorium (1st floor, Jaharis Building, 150 Harrison Ave., Boston) and by Zoom (details to come).

Dr. Foong will present on “Uncovering Antibiotic Allergy in Massachusetts Long-Term Care Facilities: Reporting Patterns and Impact on Antibiotic Prescribing.” He was recently awarded the IDSA’s Leaders in Epidemiology, Antimicrobial Stewardship and Public Health (LEAP) Fellowship for his project, “A Point Prevalence Survey of Antibiotic Allergy Labels Among Long Term Care Facility Residents in Massachusetts – Variation by Race/Ethnicity and Impact on Antibiotic Patterns.” He is partnering with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for this research. (Learn more about Dr. Foong here.)

Mr. Hernandez-Bird will present on “Applying the Mouse Pneumonia Model of Acinetobacter baumannii for the Evolution and Characterization of Colistin-Selected Mutants.” His research in the Isberg Lab looks at how A. baumanii evolves drug resistance in the context of an in-vivo infection, and how the presence or absence of an immune response affects this process. Mr. Hernandez-Bird was a Levy CIMAR Featured Trainee in 2020. You can learn about his current work here.

Please join us for our November Levy CIMAR Science Seminar, which will dive into recent bacteriophage work from both the clinical and basic science perspectives. We will hear from two speakers this month: CIMAR’s own Brian Chow, MD, an Attending Physician and Director of the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program at Tufts Medical Center, and Elizabeth Tan, a PhD candidate studying cholera bacteriophage in the laboratory of CIMAR’s Andrew Camilli, PhD. The talks will take place on Thursday, November 16th, in Behrakis Auditorium (1st floor, Jaharis Building, 150 Harrison Ave.) and by Zoom (details to come).

Dr. Chow will present on “Bringing Phage to Bedside: Implementing a Phage Clinical Trial.” His work at Tufts Medical Center involves clinical trials which advance novel therapeutics and vaccines to FDA approval, and he is interested in trials involving bacteriophage as adjunctive therapy for drug resistant infections. (Learn more about Dr. Chow here.)

Ms. Tan will present on “Looking for Validation: Assessing ICP1 Mutant Fitness After Tn-seq.” Her research in the Camilli Lab looks at how the cholera phage ICP1 completes its viral lifecycle under different host contexts using high throughput sequencing to systematically study phage genes. (Learn more about Ms. Tan here.)

Please join us for this month’s Levy CIMAR Science Talk from our own Shira Doron, MD, who among her many titles is Chief Infection Control Officer for Tufts Medicine where she  oversees Infection Control and Antimicrobial Stewardship. She is also the chair of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Centers of Excellence Subcommittee of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and serves as a consultant to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health Antimicrobial Resistance Program.  Dr. Doron will present on “Diagnostic Stewardship as a Tool for Antimicrobial Stewardship” on Thursday, October 26th, at 12 noon.

Antimicrobial misuse and overuse are known problems in patient care, resulting in the rising prevalence of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) pathogens. Antimicrobial stewardship is a collection of clinical practices designed to turn the tide against AMR. Diagnostic stewardship is just one of these practices and entails ordering appropriate tests for individual patients at the right time, improving clinical care. Dr. Doron leads antimicrobial stewardship efforts including diagnostic stewardship efforts for Tufts Medicine. You can learn more about her work here and more about TMC’s antimicrobial stewardship services here.

Discovery and Development of Novel Antimalarials and Their Use as Chemical Tools to Discover New Biology of the Malaria Parasite – WEHI’s Prof. Alan F. Cowman

Date: September 28, 2023
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location: Hybrid: In-Person and Zoom (Audience limited to Tufts Members and Affiliates; please contact CIMAR@tufts.edu for more details.)
Levy CIMAR Science Lunch | Tufts Center for Global Public Health Seminar | TUSM Global Health Faculty Council Seminar

We are excited to announce our first seminar speaker for the 2023-2024 academic year, Professor Alan F. Cowman, who among his many roles is acting Director of Australia’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). An internationally acclaimed expert in malaria research, Prof. Cowman heads a laboratory at WEHI where he and his team aim to advance the understanding of how malaria-causing parasites invade human cells. The seminar—Discovery and Development of Novel Antimalarials and Their Use as Chemical Tools to Discover New Biology of the Malaria Parasite—will take place on  Thursday, September 28th, at 12 noon both via Zoom and in person. Details to come. This talk is jointly sponsored by the Levy CIMAR, the TUSM Global Health Faculty Council, and the Tufts Center for Global Public Health.

Prof. Cowman and his lab study Plasmodium falciparum and other Plasmodium spp. to determine how they infect humans and cause disease. The team collaborate with the Merck pharmaceutical company to develop novel antimalarials, and this academic/industrial collaboration has resulted in development of a clinical candidate that is now in first-in-human clinical trials.

You can learn more about Dr. Cowman and the Cowman Lab here.

Transcriptional Profiling for Infectious Disease Diagnostics and Discovery – Massachusetts General Hospital’s Roby Bhattacharyya, MD, PhD

Date: May 25, 2023
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location: Hybrid (Audience limited to Tufts Members and Affiliates; please contact CIMAR@tufts.edu for more details.)
Levy CIMAR Science Lunch

We are pleased to welcome Massachusetts General Hospital’s Roby Bhattacharyya, MD, PhD, to present for our May 25th Levy CIMAR Science Lunch, our last seminar of the ’22-’23 season! Dr. Bhattacharyya is an Assistant Professor in the Infectious Diseases Division at MGH as well as an Associate Member of the Broad Institute and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. He will present on “Transcriptional Profiling for Infectious Disease Diagnostics and Discovery” at 12 noon both in-person and via Zoom.

Dr. Bhattacharyya maintains a lab at the Broad where he and his team pursue basic and translational research on pathogenic microbes, with a particular focus on antimicrobial resistance and transcriptional responses to antibiotic exposure, and on characterizing their impact on infected patients, including the immune responses elicited upon systemic infection such as sepsis or COVID-19.

You can learn more about Dr. Bhattacharyya and the Bhattacharyya Lab’s work at  https://www.bhattacharyyalab.org.

Imaging Drugs and Bugs in Tissue using Mass Spectrometry – Tufts Medical Center’s Sankha (Bobby) Basu, MD, PhD

Date: April 27, 2023
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location: Hybrid (Audience limited to Tufts Members and Affiliates; please contact CIMAR@tufts.edu for more details.)
Levy CIMAR Science Lunch

Please join us on Thursday, April 27th, at noon for a seminar from Sankha (Bobby) Basu, MD, PhD, Director of Clinical Microbiology at Tufts Medical Center. Dr. Basu’s research interests include the development of novel mass spectrometry approaches, including diagnostic applications in infectious disease.

Dr. Basu earned his MD and PhD from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and completed both his clinical pathology residency and microbiology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Engineering Phages as Novel Antimicrobials Targeting Gram-Negative Pathogens – Massachusetts General Hospital’s Bryan Lenneman, Ph.D.

Date: March 30, 2023
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location: Hybrid (Audience limited to Tufts Members and Affiliates; please contact CIMAR@tufts.edu for more details.)
Levy CIMAR Science Lunch

Please join us in person or on Zoom for the March 2023 Levy CIMAR Science Lunch seminar from Bryan Lenneman, Ph.D., a Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Lenneman will present on “Engineering Phages as Novel Antimicrobials Targeting Gram-Negative Pathogens.”

Dr. Lenneman’s research interests include utilizing synthetic biology to develop novel therapeutics against diseases associated with dysbiosis of the human gut microbial community. His work focuses on engineering bacteriophages as an alternative to conventional antibiotics for the removal of pathogenic bacteria and on developing probiotic bacteria as therapeutic additives to the gut microbiome.

Dr. Lenneman is a Research Fellow in MGH’s Christina Faherty Lab and was previously a Postdoctoral Associate in the Timothy Lu lab at MIT from 2019-2022. He obtained his Ph.D. in Genetics, Genomics, and Systems Biology at The University of Chicago in 2019.

Metabolic Modeling Predicts Unique Drug Targets in the Lyme Disease Pathogen Borrelia burgdorferi – Tufts University School of Medicine’s Peter Gwynne, PhD

Date: February 23, 2023
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location: Hybrid (Audience limited to Tufts Members and Affiliates; please contact CIMAR@tufts.edu for more details.)
Levy CIMAR Science Lunch

Please join us for our February Levy CIMAR Science Lunch presented by Lyme disease expert Peter Gwynne, PhD, a research assistant professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine and Director for Translational Research at the Tufts University Lyme Disease Initiative. He will present on “Metabolic Modeling Predicts Unique Drug Targets in the Lyme Disease Pathogen Borrelia burgdorferi.”

Dr. Gwynne is interested in Borrelia burgdorferi, which causes Lyme disease, and the molecular mechanisms the bacterium uses to transition between different hosts such as ticks, mice, and humans. Dr. Gwynne’s research aims to exploit these unique metabolic interactions to design targeted drugs for Lyme disease.

 

Articles on Our Past Events: