Kate Sawatski has joined the lab as a postdoctoral scholar to work on influenza evolution and ecology. Kate joins us after completing her PhD in Microbiology from Boston University.

Following Dr. Runstadler’s appointment as Professor in the Department of Infectious Disease & Global Health at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, the move of the lab has started into our new space on the Grafton campus.

Tracking the spread of bird flu http://news.mit.edu/2017/tracking-spread-bird-flu-alaska-north-america-0317

MIT Researchers Aim to Conduct Health Checkup on City in Its Sewers. Human waste in sewage may yield insights on disease outbreaks, superbugs and other health issues https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit-researchers-aim-to-conduct-health-checkup-on-city-in-its-sewers-1466992801#livefyre-comment

In this work led by Dr. Islam Hussein, our group has found that an engineered mutation in the influenza replication machinery of a wild bird H9N2 virus allows it to replicate in human cells, indicating that this mutation is likely implicated in adaptation of wild animal-origin viruses to humans. Co-authors […]

In this work led by PhD candidate Eric J. Ma, our group co-analyzed influenza sequencing data and influenza host barcode sequences, and discovered that genome shuffling is a mechanism that is favored when influenza jumps between viral hosts. It more broadly speaks to reticulate evolution as an evolutionary process that […]

Congratulations to Dr. Islam Hussein! His work on molecular characterization of a seal influenza virus has been published in Scientific Reports. This work, which was conducted in collaboration with the lab of Prof. Ram Sasisekharan, explored whether the seal H3N8 virus had the capacity to bind to and replicate in […]

The Runstadler Laboratory at MIT has been studying weaned gray seal pups on Muskeget Island each January since 2013. The team has consistently found evidence of influenza A virus each year, though the specific subtype of virus has not yet been determined. This year, the Runstadler Lab team are hoping […]

The Underworlds Project is a study of real-time epidemiology using biomarkers in urban sewage. The Runstadler Lab is part of the Underworlds Team, with Professor Runstadler as one of the Co-Principal Investigators and Christopher Bandoro as a Graduate Research Assistant. The MIT Underworlds Team, together with researchers from Kuwait Institute […]

  http://www.niaidceirs.org/news/2015/12/behind-the-bench-highlights-from-the-2nd-annual-ceirs-surveillance-meeting-oct-18-20-2015/