The Szpara Lab

We developed a new general-education class at Penn State -- SC 130, Viruses in our World -- to take the mystery out of these microbes! Check out Katie Herron's Daily Collegian article about the new class: https://lnkd.in/g5qFC-iq

Though we’re behind on our Facebook timeline this year, I wanted to be sure to mention tonight’s town hall on COVID-19 vaccines — and more sessions on future dates. These town halls aim to answer people’s questions about these vaccines, and are sponsored by the ASM (American Society of Microbiology) and ASV (American Society of Virology). No slide show, no talking points, just your questions & honest answers from virologists! You can sign up for one and have your questions answered by an expert —

Education & Outreach | American Society for Virology Scientific experts from major colleges and universities across the country are hosting a series of live town hall meetings to answer your questions about COVID-19 vaccination. Please come and join us…

Here's a link to the lab's contribution to COVID-19 support Hershey Medical Center & beyond. Chad Kuny pitched in major efforts for this one, as did many others across campus -- kudos!

New decontamination protocol permits reuse of N95 respirators | Penn State University A new protocol using aerosolized hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate N95 respirators could allow them to be safely reused in hospital settings. The protocol, optimized by a team of Penn State researchers, inactivates viruses without deforming or damaging the respirator and could help hospitals overco...

We've been more than a little distracted lately, as Chad Kuny published both an awesome paper on HSV-1 evolution in vitro, and contributed to a preprint on sterilization of N95 masks for reuse during . First, here's the paper on how HSV-1 undergoes genetic drift -- or is it adaptive evolution? -- in the most common cell line used to culture viruses: https://doi.org/10.1093/ve/veaa013

Happy holidays! We’ve been on science Twitter more than here lately, so check there also for updates (). We’ll get this timeline caught up soon, but first, let’s welcome the holidays with thanks to this awesome group of people — one could not ask for a better group of people to do science with! Here’s to a great 2020!

Congratulations to our summer SROP student, Yarelis Méndez, & mentor Chad Kuny, on a successful research project and final presentation! It was great to have you in the lab, Yarelis! State Eberly College of Science Institutes of the Life Sciences

Happy graduation to Matt Chen, a PSU undergraduate who's been doing research in our lab over the lab year. He's off to the Bay Area to pursue a biotech startup: doing CBC counts via smartphone -- https://www.moichor.com/ Congrats, kudos, & good luck to new grad Matt Chen!

Friday was our undergrad's final presentations of the semester, and picture day too! Kudos to each of your for building your science skills!

Also, here is the final published version of our Finnish HSV-1 collaboration with Veijo Hukkanen & colleagues, which came out in the April 2019 (Volume 93,Issue 8) edition of the Journal of Virology:

Comparison of Herpes Simplex Virus 1 Strains Circulating in Finland Demonstrates the Uncoupling of Whole-Genome Relatedness and Phenotypic Outcomes of Viral Infection A majority of adults in Finland are seropositive carriers of herpes simplex viruses (HSV). Infection occurs at epithelial or mucosal surfaces, after which virions enter innervating nerve endings, eventually establishing lifelong infection in neurons of the sensory or autonomic nervous system. Recent...

In the busy-ness of last week, I missed the official PSU press release about Molly's new fellowship -- so here it is!

Molly Rathbun awarded the Academic Computing Fellowship | Penn State University Doctoral student Molly Rathbun has been awarded the Academic Computing Fellowship. The fellowship is offered through a partnership between the Graduate School and Penn State Information Technology Services. It was established in 1987.