Humblebrags
News and notes from the Bhattacharyya lab
2024 Dec
Notice of Award received for an extension of our R21 on a streamlined approach to PBMC isolation from clinical samples for scRNAseq, applied to patients with sepsis (but hopefully far more widely useful), into an R33 phase!! We’re excited to scale up this approach, led by Alyssa & Pierre in close collaboration with MPI’s Mike Filbin & Nate Shapiro, by docking into a much larger-scale clinical study of sepsis & related illnesses.
2024 Nov
Afua Asare joins the lab! Afua is a junior at Harvard studying Molecular & Cellular Biology, and will work with Alyssa & Pierre on the sepsis project.
2024 Oct
Eleanor & David’s paper, with contributions from Melanie & Eden, is available online today at the Journal of Clinical Microbiology! (Will take awhile for full open access; in the meantime the pdf is available on our lab website’s publications page, and the preprint is always free too.)
2024 Oct
David is named IDSA’s Innovator of the Year after rockin’ it at a “shark tank” style IDEA incubator pitch at IDWeek 2024 - congrats David!!!
2024 Oct
Alyssa, Pierre, & David present posters at IDWeek 2024!!!
2024 Sep
Alyssa & Pierre’s preprint is live! Always an exciting day.
2024 Sep
Pierre, Shriya, and Alyssa present their work at the CISID Trainee Retreat! Pierre & Shriya gave lightning-talks, and Alyssa presented a poster on work that should be out as a preprint any day now.
2024 Sep
Eleanor & David’s manuscript on a clinical pilot implementation of transcriptional antibiotic susceptibility testing got accepted for publication! Full announcement to come once the embargo is lifted. Fellow & former lab members Eden & Melanie also contributed as co-authors, along with several fantastic collaborators. Congrats all!!!
2024 Aug
Roby joins the newly-formed Center for Integrated Solutions in Infectious Diseases (CISID) as a CISID Investigator. CISID is a joint venture by the Broad & local hospitals (MGH, BWH, Boston Children’s) to accelerate clinically-relevant basic and translational research in ID (bench-to-bedside and bedside-to-bench).
2024 Jul
Dipesh Solanky joins the lab! Dipesh is an ID fellow and will do his postdoc research jointly with the Broad’s Microbial Omics Core & our MGH ID Division Chief Dr. Ruanne Barnabas on low-cost molecular diagnostics development for pathogens including HPV. Welcome, Dipesh!!!
2024 Jul
David was named a finalist for the IDEA incubator at IDWeek 2024, and the winner in one of the innovative diagnostics categories!!!
2024 Jul
Jennifer Su, who rotated last fall, joins the lab as our very first graduate student! Jennifer is in the BBS program, and will be working on carbapenem resistance mechanisms. Welcome, Jennifer!!!
2024 Jul
On her last full day in lab, Eleanor submits a manuscript & preprint with David and many collaborators, on a real-world implementation of transcriptional antibiotic susceptibility testing direct from blood culture broth, a proof-of-concept pilot study reporting “antibiograms” for 9 antibiotics from 3 classes (beta-lactams, fluoroquinolones, aminoglycosides) for two common Gram negatives on clinical samples.
2024 Jul
Eleanor leaves the lab, after 3 amazing years as an RA. After a summer of adventuring, she will start grad school in the fall at UC Davis in their Plant Pathology program, pursuing a PhD! We sent her off with what has become the lab’s standard celebratory lunch outing, at Area Four (and also an Escape Room!).
2024 Jul
Andrew Purssell (Transplant ID doc from UToronto) joins the lab for a visiting research elective this summer! He’ll work with Lauren and Leslie on carbapenem resistance.
2024 Jul
Zoe Weiss (HMS MSTP1) joins the lab for a summer rotation! She’ll work with Liz and Eden on fungal diagnostics.
2024 Jun
Roby wins Stephen M. Krane early-career faculty research award/lectureship from MGH Department of Medicine, gives Grand Rounds on an overview of the lab’s research (second speaker at this link)
2024 Jun
Lauren Donnelly (MGB Pathology resident) starts her postdoc research in the lab! Lauren did her MD-PhD split between Dartmouth and Tufts, with her PhD in Aimee Shen’s lab at Tufts, and will be working on carbapenem resistance mechanisms, joining Leslie and Jonathan.
2024 Apr
Shriya awarded Harvard Microbial Sciences Institute (MSI) and Program for Research in Science & Engineering (PRISE) funding for her summer research in lab!
2024 Mar
Pierre presents his research at a spectacular departmental seminar at the Ragon Institute.
2024 Mar
After a long hiatus, Roby finally finds the bandwidth to update the lab website, haha.
2024 Mar
David presents his research in progress at the Harvard ID T32 retreat.
2024 Feb
Jonathan and Shriya were awarded Harvard College Research Program fellowships to support their research in the lab this semester!!
2024 Jan
Bailey Bowcutt (BSPH G1) and Tsion Abay (BBS G1) join us for lab rotations this winter! Bailey is working on carbapenem resistance modifiers in clinical isolates, and Tsion is working with Pierre & Alyssa on cellular mechanisms of sepsis. Welcome Bailey and Tsion, we’re happy to have you join us.
2024 Jan
Leslie Lopez joins the lab!!! Leslie comes to us from Amherst, MA where she finished up a degree in Biochemistry & Biophysics in summer 2023 before staying on to work more in her undergrad lab after graduation. She will work on antibiotic resistance mechanisms and diagnostics in the Enterobacterales. Welcome Leslie!!!
2024 Jan
Shriya Bhat joins the lab!!! Shriya is a freshman at Harvard and will be joining David and Pun to work on developing the SHERLOCK assay platform for rapid bacterial identification and AMR detection in low-resource settings.
2023 Dec
Liz Arsenault Yee joins the lab!!! Liz finished her PhD at Notre Dame, defending her thesis on cryptococcal pathogenesis in the lab of Felipe Santiago-Tirado, and is coming home to her native MA to work with us on fungal diagnostics! Welcome Liz!!!
2023 Oct
Jennifer Su (BBS G1) begins her rotation with us, bravely becoming the first-ever Bhattacharyya lab roton! Her rotation lasts through December. Welcome Jennifer!
2023 Oct
Eden and Jonathan received Harvard College Research Program fellowships to support their research in the lab this semester!!
2023 Oct
Pun Sangruji joins the lab! Pun is a junior at Tufts and will be joining David to work on developing the SHERLOCK assay platform for rapid bacterial identification and AMR detection in low-resource settings.
2023 Sep
David’s paper, a retrospective study of genomic and clinical properties of Klebsiellla pneumoniae bacteremia, is accepted at CID!
2023 Aug
Jonathan presents his summer research to colleagues in the PRISE program, summarizing and contextualizing a lot of data into a cool story about an unexpected contributor to carbapenem resistance - remarkable sophistication for a rising college sophomore!
2023 Aug
After a whirlwind 8 weeks in lab, Selama’s time as part of the BSRP came to an end. Selama will return to Howard University for his senior year this fall.
2023 Aug
Selama presents his summer research (mentored by David) to the Broad’s BSRP community, as both an oral and a poster presentation. After working hard much of his 8 weeks in our lab to optimize an assay, he was able to crank through dozens of samples to generate really exciting data to share with the group!
2023 Jul
Roby is accepted as a faculty member in the Harvard PhD program in Biological and Biomedical Sciences, meaning the lab can start accepting graduate students starting this fall - BBS students, please reach out if you’re interested in rotating!
2023 Jul
After a while trying to sort out logistics, Sara starts working in lab!!!
2023 Jun
Alex finishes his tenure in the lab and heads to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he will begin an ASM CPEP fellowship in clinical microbiology. We will miss you, Alex - we appreciate your hard work and expertise in molecular microbiology, and we wish you all the best in your new position!
2023 Jun
Alex, David, Eleanor, and Selama present posters at the American Society for Microbiology national meeting, aka ASM Microbe (Selama’s poster is on work from his prior lab).
2023 Jun
Alex presents a talk and Eleanor and Jonathan present posters at the Boston Bacterial Meeting, and Roby moderates a session.
2023 Jun
Selama joins the lab as a summer BSRP student!!!
2023 May
Alex and Kyra’s preprint on the carbapenem(ase) inoculum effect and its consequences is posted at bioRxiv!
2023 Apr
Alex’s poster on his work with Kyra on the inoculum effect in carbapenem resistant Enterobacterales won a poster award at Harvard’s Microbial Sciences Initiative symposium. Stay tuned for a preprint on this work, coming soon.
2023 Apr
Eleanor got engaged!!!!! Congrats, Eleanor and Jacob!!!!!
2023 Apr
David was awarded the John G. Bartlett fellowship from the Antibiotic Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG)!
2023 Apr
Eden and Jonathan were awarded summer undergraduate research fellowships from Harvard’s Microbial Sciences Initiative (MSI)!!
2023 Apr
Pierre was awarded the MGH Physician-Scientist Development Award!
2023 Apr
Sara Gomez Villegas joined the lab as an affiliate member - enriching our group and learning at the bench “on the side” while she completes Internal Medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she’s currently an intern! Sara got her MD in Colombia, then did postdoctoral research on AMR mechanisms in Staph aureus with Cesar Arias for several years prior to residency, and is looking to keep her research mind active while she continues full-time medical training.
2023 Mar
Pierre’s abstract to the Cold Spring Harbor Labs meeting on Systems Immunology was selected for an oral presentation!
2023 Mar
Jonathan won the PRISE and Herchel Smith fellowships to support his summer research in the lab!
2023 Mar
Alex, David, and Eleanor had abstracts accepted to ASM Microbe, slated for June in Houston TX.
2023 Mar
Eden Seyoum joins the lab! Eden is an undergraduate at Harvard.
2023 Feb
Alex won a Travel Award from the American Society for Microbiology to attend ASM Microbe 2023!!!
2023 Feb
Jonathan received a Harvard College Research Program Term-Time fellowship to support his work in the lab this semester!!!
2023 Feb
David won the Massachusetts Medical Society Information Technology award for his project on democratizing AMR diagnostics with SHERLOCK!!!
2023 Feb
Pierre was selected to receive a 2023 Emerging Generation (E-Gen) Award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation!!!
2023 Jan
Friend of the lab, longtime collaborator, and new PI at St. Jude’s (Memphis, TN) Peijun Ma’s paper on BacDrop, a high-throughput method for single-cell bacterial RNA-Seq, is finally out in Cell, after literal years under review and many more years than that in development. Super-proud of Peijun and this work. (Details, including a time-limited free link to the paper, in threads on Twitter or Mastodon; a pdf is also linked from our Publications page.)
2023 Jan
Alasdair (former undergraduate researcher, summer 2022) got accepted to medical school in the UK! Congrats, Alasdair!!!
2023 Jan
Alyssa DuBois and Jonathan Chen join the lab! Alyssa joins as a hybrid Research Associate & Computational Associate (she officially starts next month), and Jonathan is an undergraduate at Harvard.
2023 Jan
Lab received a Notice of Award on an R21/R33 from NIGMS to improve scRNAseq use in clinical settings, specifically aimed at better characterizing sepsis immunopathophysiology! Roby is one of two multi-PIs on this project, along with close collaborator Mike Filbin (MGH ED).
2022 Dec
Pierre’s paper on the relative takeover rates of the Delta & Omicron variants across US states was accepted to OFID as an Editor’s Choice! We found no relationship between takeover rates and either vaccination rates or our best estimate of population immunity by state - in other words, no evidence to support the theoretical concern that widespread vaccination might hasten the takeover of even a highly immune-evasive variant. Read Roby’s tweet thread (or Mastodon thread, if you prefer) for a brief summary of key findings & rationale.
2022 Nov
David was selected for the MGH Center for Global Health Research Development award!!!
2022 Oct
Alex and Pierre present posters at IDWeek 2022.
2022 Oct
Pierre was selected for the KL2 mentored career development award!!!
2022 Sep
Bittersweet news: Kyra and Alasdair both finished their time in the Bhattacharyya lab. After two amazing years with us as an RA, Kyra joined Seres Therapeutics and the emerging world of microbiome therapeutics. Alasdair returns to finish his undergraduate studies at University College London (and to run the London Marathon!) after a fun, productive, whirlwind summer in the lab. We will miss them both dearly, are grateful for all they brought to the lab, and are excited to see the great things they do as their careers unfold!
2022 Sep
David Roach joins the lab! David is an Infectious Disease fellow in the MGH/BWH training program (like Roby, Pierre, and Michelle before him) and did research in the Shendure and Salipante labs at UW on the genomics of AMR in UW ICUs and in Peru (with a particular focus on carbapenem resistant Klebsiella) before coming east for ID fellowship. He plans to work on democratizing molecular AMR diagnostics for underserved areas around the globe.
2022 Sep
Alex is awarded the Eddie Méndez Scholar Award and presents his work at the associated symposium at Fred Hutch in Seattle, WA.
2022 Aug
Michelle and Eleanor’s paper (preprinted in May) with Poppy Sephton-Clark (co-first) and Christina Cuomo (co-corresponding) officially accepted to Medical Mycology after peer review!
2022 Jul
Pierre and Roby post a preprint to medRxiv on an ecological study describing the relative takeover rates and dates of the Delta and Omicron variants across US states, as a function of immunity (by vaccination and documented infection) in each state. Peer review pending.
2022 Jun
Kyra attends the ASM Future Leaders Mentoring Fellowship pre-meeting symposium, and presents a poster at ASM on her work with Alex!
2022 Jun
Alasdair joins the lab as a summer student!
2022 May
Michelle, Eleanor, Melanie, and Roby post a preprint to bioRxiv on a rapid, accurate way to identify Candida species from blood culture. Second Bhattacharyya lab manuscript to make its way into the world! Close collaboration with the Broad’s Fungal Genomics group and the Clinical Microbiology labs at MGH and BWH. Peer review pending.
2022 Apr
Kyra awarded the Future Leaders Mentoring Fellowship from the American Society of Microbiology!
2022 Apr
Kyra’s abstract accepted at ASM Microbe 2022!
2021 Jun
Eleanor joins the Bhattacharyya lab!!! Eleanor joins us from UT-Austin, where she majored in Computational Biology and worked in a synthetic biology lab.
2021 Jun
In bittersweet news, Melanie and Michelle finished their time in the Bhattacharyya lab. Melanie is heading off to start an MD-PhD program at Brown University, and Michelle took a dream job at AlloVir. We are proud of both of them and grateful for all that they each brought to the lab, and while we are happy to see them grow, we will miss them tremendously!
2021 Jun
Kyra and Michelle present posters at the World Microbe Forum, ASM’s international meeting!
2021 Jun
Kyra gives a talk, and Alex is a panelist and member of the organizing committee at the Boston Bacterial Meeting!
2021 Mar
Melanie and Alex’s paper accepted! Paywalled version here (sorry). First accepted paper from the lab, and first first-author paper for Mel!
2021 Mar
Pierre becomes a dad!!!!! Welcome to the world, Peja Pierre Kofi Takyi Ankomah! It’s a bit of a mess right now, but we’re working on it. We can’t wait to meet you. Once people are, like, meeting people again.
2020 Oct
Melanie, Alex, and Roby post a preprint to bioRxiv on work extending the GoPhAST-R approach, showing that the same set of transcripts reflect susceptibility after exposure to multiple members of an antibiotic class. It’s Melanie’s first first-author manuscript, and the first Bhattacharyya lab preprint! (Peer review in progress.)
2020 Oct
Michelle and Melanie each present a poster at IDWeek 2020 (virtually), and Roby gives a talk (late-breaker abstract on the COVID-19 SNF preprint). Michelle won a trainee award for her abstract/poster!
2020 Oct
Kyra joins the Bhattacharyya lab!!! Kyra comes to us from UC-Riverside, where she earned her BS in Bioengineering and starred on the soccer team.
2020 Aug
Roby is promoted to Assistant Professor at MGH and HMS, and thus to Associate Member at the Broad.
2020 Jul
Roby posts a preprint to medRxiv of work with the Broad’s Genomics Platform (co-1st author Niall Lennon; co-corresponding authors Eric Lander and Stacey Gabriel) and MADPH showing that SARS-CoV-2 viral loads from the nasopharynx are not correlated with symptom status at the time of testing in a large cross-sectional study of residents and staff at MA skilled nursing facilities. People without symptoms at the time of testing were just as likely as those with symptoms to be shedding 1 billion viral genome equivalents per mL! (Peer review in progress.)
2020 Jul
Michelle and Pierre join the Bhattacharyya lab!!! Michelle is coming straight from her clinical ID fellowship year at MGH/BWH, while Pierre is coming from his chief resident year at MGH, and his ID fellowship year before that. Both of their clinical years were transformed in unimaginable ways by the COVID-19 pandemic. Both are MD-PhDs, returning to the lab after years of clinical training, just like Roby did back in the day.
2020 Jul
Melanie gives a talk and Alex presents a poster at the Boston Bacterial Meeting!
2020 Jul
Roby’s first R01 fires up! Exciting times, and dearly appreciated during a year of so much uncertainty. This grant will support work on fungal RNA-based diagnostics (ID and AST), in collaboration with Co-I Christina Cuomo’s fungal genomics group at the Broad.
2020 May
Roby is named an MGH Dept of Medicine 2020 Transformative Scholar.
2020 Feb
Alex joins the Bhattacharyya lab!!! Alex comes to us from Rockefeller, where he completed his PhD in Chemical Biology in the lab of Seth Darst and Elizabeth Campbell.
2020 Jan
Roby and Virginia Pierce (Ass’t Director of the MGH Clinical Microbiology lab) receive the MGH DOM Pilot Translational Research Grant to apply GoPhAST-R to clinical blood culture samples! (edit: this exciting collaboration was temporarily derailed when COVID-19 overwhelmed Clin Micro labs the world over, but we look forward to re-launching soon!)
2019 Oct
Roby submits his first R01 (from his hotel room at IDWeek, finished in a down-to-the-wire frenzy), with a huge assist from Melanie and collaborator/Co-I Christina Cuomo. (In this lab, we celebrate the submissions - they’re what we actually can control!)
2019 Jul
Melanie’s first day!!! And with it, the Bhattacharyya lab is born (July 1, 2019)!!!