So many people to thank, but I am particularly grateful to my mentors @bkoskella.bsky.social and @paulturnerlab.bsky.social for their support over many years. I am so so sad to be leaving the wonderfully supportive Turner lab, but excited to start a new chapter.

I am recruiting graduate students (MS and/or PhD) for the upcoming fall semester (more info here: tinyurl.com/35p6hfx7), and will soon be hiring a research associate/technician (details TBD).

We will be studying the effects of environmental factors on non-model marine phage-host interactions, with a particular interest in the causes and consequences of context-dependent prophage dynamics. If you are interested in tackling these questions, please reach out!

Very happy to share that I will be starting as an Assistant Professor in the department of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina in January! My group will be working on environmental phage ecology and evolution, and I am recruiting for the upcoming year (more info below).

I gave a talk last year at TEDxNewEngland aimed at introducing the idea of viral sociality to a general audience, including implications for evolution & virology. Video now available online below.

#socialviruses #evosky #virosky 🧪

New paper alert! We suggest caution in the analyses of viral auxiliary metabolic genes and propose a new overarching term - 'auxiliary viral genes' (AVGs) to describe different types of such genes. @simrouxvirus.bsky.social #phagesky #Microsky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Have you ever wondered what increasing environmental stress will do to microbial communities?

In our new preprint, @martinadalbello.bsky.social, Jeff Gore and I studied the impact of salinity on microbial community composition and function. 🧵 (1/5)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share new #program, STEPS, which can simulate #dynamics of the E. coli Long-Term Evolution Experiment (#LTEE) or other microbes in serial transfer regime.

telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2025/08/12/s...

STEPS developed by @devinmlake.bsky.social, Zachary Matson, Minako Izutsu, and me.

We (with Clement Coclet, not on Bsky) had the chance to work on a broad "state of viromics" review. We tried to use this to give an overview of how the field changed over the last ~ 15 years, and also what we think are some of the major remaining challenges. Full-text access at -> rdcu.be/excHt

For #ASMicrobe folks - looking forward to a busy phage day on Sunday!

Preprint out! Bacteria w/ hyper-replicative filamentous phage lead to overnight emergence of cheater phages. Bacteria w/ both phages can outcompete wildtype, then rapidly lose phage via a phage Tragedy of the Commons
@shellyscrib.bsky.social @vscooper.micropopbio.org www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New on #biorXiv: 'Inferring single-cell heterogeneity of bacteriophage life-history traits from population-scale dynamics'. A theory-experiment collaboration, led by @mariandm.bsky.social + Ran Tahan w/the Lindell group at Technion (and yes, I am excited).

a 🧵

www.biorxiv.org/contenat/10....

How can single-cell transcriptomics profile phage infection in individual microbial cells? Check out our preprint with Anika Gupta, Norma Morella, Dmitry Sutormin & other authors, in collaboration with Georg Seelig (UW) and Neel Dey (Fred Hutch). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We developed a microscopy-based technique🔬 to measure attachment of viruses #phages to host cells. 🦠

The paper was posted online today:
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#phagesky #microsky

Is it “winner-takes all” when the simplest living things compete? Check out my fresh publication on phage coexistence in Science and a thread below🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Phage friends - hope to see you all next year in LA!