Tag: Wisconsin Institute of Discovery

Okay, first of all this is a shoutout post to Manuel Garavito, who has been putting up with me for the last two days – my first two days in a wet lab for several years. Manuel has been beyond fantastic in showing me their basic protocols and having patience with my rusty lab skills. If this project will work out, it will very much be because of him.

This weekend, there haven’t been a lot of time for other things than lab work, but I spent Friday evening at the Memorial Union where I happened to stumble into a concert with Brazilian (I think, not sure) music. And on Saturday evening I went out to the Hop Cat, where I tasted the fantastic beer Psychedellic Cat Grass and got taught the basics of American football by a woman who was also there on her own, apparently to watch the game. So, I’m doing my well but working my ass off with things I am not really that good at. Yet.

So, I have arrived in Madison, WI. I had a 17 hour flight yesterday, and I am quite messed-up with my perception of time, but except for that i’m good. I spend the morning walking around in Madison (and found a really nice coffee place – Colectivo) and getting a phone contract. Madison really is a very beautiful and green town, which reminds me quite a lot of an “American Uppsala”. After that, I had lunch with the majority of the Jo Handelsman lab at the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery Building, and then Manuel spent the afternoon showing me the experimental system we’re going to use (and its quirks). Lots and lots of new things to take in and choices to consider. This will be an interesting year. Now, I will try to find a place to eat and get a beer before I’m too tired (it’s half past one in the morning in Sweden as I’m writing this…) I look forward to my coming month here, but I also miss my family a lot already.

Today, I started my new position at the University of Gothenburg as a non-tenured assistant professor (forskarassistent)*. In essence, this means that I have a position funded by my own grant until the end of 2020, although I will be on a leave-of-absence while doing my PostDoc with Jo Handelsman in Wisconsin. Speaking of which, I will be leaving to the US on Thursday next week for a month of setting things up at her lab (and also going to the EDAR4 conference in Lansing). I will return to Sweden in mid-September and leave for the US for real early next year.

In terms of actual work, this change of position will not mean very much at the moment. I will continue to do the same things for some time, and I will remain closely associated with Joakim Larsson’s lab at the Dept. of Infectious Diseases. And luckily, I will retain my lovely roommates for at least the time being. In the long run, however, this means that I will shift my research focus slightly, away from antibiotic resistance risk management towards interactions in microbial communities (still related to antibiotics though). Exciting times ahead!

Note
* For some reason, the university administration refuses to call this position assistant professor in English at this time, instead referring to the position as “Postdoctoral research fellow”. I guess that it might be bloody annoying explaining that this is not the same as “postdoctoral researcher” and virtually everywhere else would be called “(non-tenured) assistant professor”, but then on the other hand, who cares about titles anyway?

So 2017 has begun, and this year will bring new challenges and exciting opportunities. First of all, my application for a 3.5 year grant from the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS) to go to Prof. Jo Handelsman‘s lab in the US was granted. Since Prof. Handelsman in is moving her lab to University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she will be heading the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery (after returning from the White House), it means that this summer I will be moving to Wisconsin. I will retain a link to the University of Gothenburg and the Joakim Larsson lab though, and part of the grant is actually for covering my salary after returning from the US, so Gothenburg won’t get rid of me so easily.

The granted project will use high-throughput sequencing techniques to identify genes improving colonization and invasion ability or resistance to invasion in microbial communities, using a model system developed by the Handelsman lab. The project will focus on genes important for colonization, invasion and resistance to invasion under exposure to sub-lethal antibiotics concentrations. The project will contribute important knowledge towards the understanding of microbial colonization and invasion and highlight disturbances to the interactions in microbial communities caused by anthropogenic activities. In addition, the results of the project will hopefully allow for prediction of secondary effects of antibiotic exposure in the environment, and the preparation for future challenges related to infections with pathogenic bacteria. The project has already been highlighted by CARe (although this was before Jo announced her move from Yale) and a FORMAS press release (in Swedish).

The project will go under the acronym InSiDER, and I intend to write about it in a special section of the website, called the Wisconsin Blog. My intention is to include personal reflections on life in Wisconsin and work in the Handelsman lab there, but we’ll see how those plans turn out. Anyway, I am very thankful for FORMAS funding this project and giving me the opportunity to work with one of the leading scientists within microbial ecology in the world!