The Symbiotic Podcast

The field of stem cell research has progressed immensely since its high-profile politicization in the early 2000s, with researchers now able to harvest cells from uncontroversial sources and manipulate them with ever-increasing accuracy and efficiency. Associate Professor of Biology and Biomedical Engineering Lance Lian talks about his key role in advancing our understanding and mastery of stem cells and the incredible medical applications they promise.

Sally Mackenzie is one of the world’s foremost experts on epigenetics, the study of how environmental changes affect the way genes are expressed. In this conversation we cover an epigenetic techniques she’s patented, the biotech company she founded, and the potential role that epigenetics could play in human health.

Relevant Links

• Mackenzie Laboratory Website
• Epicrop Technologies Inc.
• Trailblazers: Sally Mackenzie’s Vision for the Future of Plants

Featured Guest

• Sally Mackenzie
  Director of the Plant Institute; Huck Chair of Functional Genomics; Professor of Biology and of Plant Science

Laura Weyrich leads efforts to better understand the impact of diet on the communities of microorganisms residing in our mouths, and their influence on human health. In this livestreamed conversation, she talks about her work with Neanderthal teeth, the ethics of dealing with human remains, and shifts in human activity that have changed the makeup of our microbiomes.

Relevant Links

• MicroARCH Lab Website
• "The woman who loves the gunk on Neanderthal teeth." Cosmos Magazine, December 14, 2017
• Laura S. Weyrich Google Scholar Profile

Featured Guest

• Laura Weyrich
  Associate Professor of Anthropology

Dr. Steven Schiff has spent much of his career fighting the scourge of infant infection, especially in low and middle-income countries with minimal healthcare infrastructure. In this livestreamed conversation, he explains the difficulties of working in places like Mbale, Uganda and Hanoi, Vietnam; shares hard-won victories in treatment and prevention; and forecasts future possibilities.

Relevant Links:

• Steven J. Schiff, MD, PhD — Engineering Science and Mechanics Wiki Page

Featured Guest:

• Dr. Steven Schiff
  Director of the Center for Neural Engineering; Brush Chair Professor of Engineering; Professor of Neurosurgery; Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics

Nita Bharti is an expert on the interplay of population movement and disease and a pioneer in the use of unorthodox data sources to better inform public health decisions. In this livestreamed conversation, she shares her open-minded, intellectually curious approach to epidemiology on multiple continents, working with people, animals, and spillover events between the two.

Relevant Links

• The Bharti Lab of Human Infectious Diseases
• Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics

Featured Guest

• Nita Bharti
  Huck Early Career Professor; Assistant Professor of Biology

David Hughes has won a number of accolades, both from the academic world and in the mainstream media, for his work with PlantVillage. In this livestreamed opening episode of season three, Hughes talks about the factors in his life and career that have made him so effective and iconoclastic.

Relevant Links

• PlantVillage
• Donate to PlantVillage
• Fast Company: How one scientist is saving crops around the world via AI-enabled apps
• David Hughes makes Newsweek’s inaugural list of 'America’s Greatest Disruptors'
• Penn State awarded nearly $39M for global research on threats to crops

Featured Guest

• David Hughes
  Huck Chair in Global Food Security; Professor of Entomology and Biology

On November 11, 2020, we hosted three members of Penn State’s Center for Disease Dynamics, all of whom all of them are deeply involved in ongoing international efforts to piece together a bigger picture of how and why new viruses like SARVS-CoV-2 emerge and spill over from other species to our own.

Related Links:

• “How We Know The Coronavirus Wasn’t Made In A Lab” (Science Insider video)
• Researchers identify evolutionary origins of SARS-CoV-2
• Boni Lab
• RISK Lab (Sagan Friant’s) 
• Peter Hudson’s Google Scholar page
• Penn State’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics

Guests: 

• Maciej Boni is an Associate Professor of Biology at Penn State. He analyzes the epidemiology and evolution of both human and avian influenza, and evaluates strategies to treat and prevent diseases, particularly in southern Vietnam. 
• Sagan Friant is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Penn State. Her works focuses on the evolutionary anthropology of human health, disease ecology, nutrition, socio-ecological systems, and bushmeat hunting, through field research in Nigeria. 
•  Peter Hudson is Willaman Professor of Biology at Penn State, and former director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. Much of Hudson’s work has implications for the control of wildlife diseases and emerging zoonotic disease across the globe. 

On October 26, 2020, we teamed up with the hosts of the Podward State podcast to interview two members of Penn State’s coronavirus task force. Both have spent countless hours since that start of the pandemic doing all they can to help protect students, faculty, staff, and local community members in an ever-changing, endlessly challenging, and highly contentious environment.

Relevant Links:

• Penn State COVID-19 Dashboard
• Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences
• Hershey Medical Center
• Podward State

Guests:

• Catharine Paules, MD - Practicing physician in the infectious disease department, Penn State Hershey Medical Center
• Andrew Read - Director of Penn State’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and former Director of Huck’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics

On October 19, 2020, we teamed up with the hosts of Podward State – a Penn State student-produced podcast, to interview researchers working on a profoundly collaborative project designed to measure multiple impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on residents and students in Centre County, PA.

Relevant Links:

• Data 4 Action sign-up page 
•  Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences 
•  Social Science Research Institute
• Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute 
• Podward State 

Guests:

• Meg Small - Research Associate in the Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development at Penn State and Director of the Health and Human Development Design for Innovation Lab 
•  Connie Rogers - Associate Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State and Associate Director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences 

On August 20, 2020, we spoke to an interdisciplinary team of scientists collaborating at the intersection of physics, engineering, materials science, epidemiology, and information technology. Their work holds the promise of new rapid identification diagnostics for SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses through enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

Relevant Links: 

• Understanding Virus Evolution Through Deep Raman Spectroscopy
• NSF Convergence Grant to Study Virus Evolution
• Lasers Could Speed Up Coronavirus Diagnostics
• Seed-Funded Coronavirus Research at Penn State

Guests:

• Maricio Terrones - Verne M. Willaman Professor of Physics and Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State
• Elodie Ghedin - Professor of Epidemiology at NYU’s School of Global Public Health
• Tim Yeh - Assistant research professor of Physics at Penn State
• Shengxi Huang - Assistant professor of electrical engineering and biomedical engineering at Penn State
• Sharon Huang - Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State