In a letter to the community, Chancellor Gallagher shares his outrage, grief, and anger. He challenges us all to demonstrate solidarity by standing with Pitt’s African American students, faculty, staff, and alumni in a shared commitment to realizing meaningful change. "How many times must we witness these blatant examples of injustice, hatred, brutality, and discrimination before we resolve to change things?" We must plot a path forward.
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Congratulations to Justin A. Dutta (IDM '19, HUGEN '23) who was recently awarded a Critical Languages Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State to study Portuguese. With an acceptance rate of less than 10%, the Critical Language Scholarship is one of the country's most competitive scholarships and the most prestigious language program for U.S. citizens.
CISTIC FIBROSIS NEWS TODAY - With the rising prevalence of superbugs, researchers are turning their attention to antibiotic molecules. Study co-authors Y. Peter Di (EOH), Berthony Deslouches (EOH), and Ronald Montelaro (IDM) have engineered a cationic antimicrobial peptide named WLBU2, licensed by Pitt spin-off Peptilogics, that's now in a clinical trial for preventing infections associated with knee and hip replacements.
MidAtlantic AIDS Education and Training Center Receives $400,000 in CARES Act Funding to support efforts to ‘prevent or minimize the impact of this pandemic on people with HIV’
COVID-19 is one of three novel coronavirus outbreaks in the past 20 years that originated in animals. How is the current outbreak similar and different from the previous ones? What course will COVID-19 take in Pennsylvania? IDM's Amy Hartman puts the current outbreak in perspective with what we know (and don’t know) about SARS-CoV-2. EPI's Donald Burke discusses the epidemiological and environmental factors that will shape the likely ph...
NBC NEWS – IDM's Charles Rinaldo said that many have tried to come up with vaccines that use two or three proteins out of the approximately 75 that make up the virus. Those would be safe, but have not protected well. Another approach has been to use a weakened form of the whole virus. In that attenuated, its replication capacity is weakened but it’s not as safe. These failures “are why this is such a monster.”
IDM’s Tatiana Garcia-Bates signed up to volunteer through the Allegheny County Health Department for the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC), where she instructed a local nursing center's staff on proper N-95 respirator fit.
Graduating master's student in IDM's community practice track Rajeev Salunke (IDM '20) has been accepted into the internal medicine residency program at the University of Connecticut. Hear directly from Rajeev about his background, his experiences at Pitt Public Health, and his aspirations for the future.
SCIENCE - IDM's Douglas Reed, who is developing and testing COVID-19 vaccines in monkey studies, says the number of animals was too small to yield statistically significant results. His team also has a manuscript in preparation that raises concerns about the way the Sinovac team grew the stock of novel coronavirus used to challenge the animals: It may have caused changes that make it less reflective of the ones that infect humans.
VICE MEDIA – Emerson Boggs (IDM PhD candidate) says, “I’m a virologist, so I probably spend more time than average looking at outbreaks. I started off as a fervent commenter, and then I wanted the ability to intervene because the science stuff got bad pretty quickly.” The subreddit is also rapidly outpacing traditional outbreak reporting. The ability to communicate back and forth easily has helped a lot of people.