Bioweapons: Threat or Fiction?
Cautionary portrayals of COVID-19 in mass media have led to a greater understanding of the dangers of a global pandemic, which has helped to reduce the impact the virus has...
The Microscope: A Modern Day Portal to Hidden Worlds
Chances are, you’ve probably looked into a microscope at least once in your life. Whether it was to look at cells of an onion skin, to visualize colonies of growing...
Influenza Virus: The Concern of a Century
The 1918 influenza pandemic infected an estimated 500 million people or one third of the global population. This led to at least 50 million deaths, all by a single virus....
Quarantine Madness
As graduate students, spending a lot of time in a lab alone isn’t anything new. However，with recent social distancing efforts, spending time alone is no longer voluntary. This forced separation...
Preventing Pandemics and Mitigating Risk
The COVID-19 pandemic was, and continues to be, devastating for many – closing businesses, suffering from mental health issues and even experiencing the death of their loved ones. The time...
Transfusing the Conversation: Intersectionality between Race and Blood Donation
Blood transfusions are important medical procedures whereby a donor’s blood is infused into a recipient intravenously. Transfusions can be lifesaving for recipients experiencing massive blood loss after surgery, injury or...
Harnessing Technology for the Control and Spread of Infectious Disease Data
As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, our current societal dynamics such as the ease of international travel and extensive daily social interaction can enable the rapid spread of infectious diseases...
Mosquito-borne tropical diseases are coming back to bite us
Vectors are organisms that transmit pathogens from one host to another, spreading viruses, bacteria and parasites that cause human illness. Annually, vector-borne infections are responsible for over 700,000 deaths, with...
Animal reservoirs and human disease outbreaks: who is to blame?
Infectious diseases constitute one of the leading causes of death globally, killing over 6 million people per year. These diseases are caused by bacterial, fungal, parasitic, and viral pathogens, which...
Vaccines, the immune memory trick
“With the exception of safe water, no other modality… has had such a major effect on mortality reduction and population growth.” – Susan and Stanley Plotkin, Vaccine 5th ed (2008).1...