Notwithstanding the different reasons, 2019 has left us reeling, myself included. Early in the year, I was left scrambling to keep my science career going in the face of unsteady funding resources. Through a combination of collaboration, long hours of writing, a strong support network, a lot of luck, and a pragmatic demeanor, I landed a tenure-track faculty position and pulled off one of the best years of my career, to date. I deeply appreciate all of the concern, assistance, coffee, revisions in a timely manner, coffee, and support provided by so many individuals in the last year.
Research
My momentous research activity of 2019 was joining the faculty of the University of Maine, Orono, School of Food and Agriculture as an Assistant Professor of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, beginning in September. In August, my partner, our patient dog, and I drove from the west coast to Maine on a 9-day adventure that would begin a new (and more permanent) phase of our life. From our education in Vermont, to my post-docs in Oregon, to my research faculty position in Oregon, to Maine, we loved the opportunity to live in various states, but are looking forward to having an address for longer than 2 years and more stable income forecasting.
We’ve driven over 7,000 miles in search of academic positions! 
Leaving Oregon. 
Arriving in Maine and Izzy can barely contain her enthusiasm.
The first few months of my faculty position have been busy! Notably, it’s involved a LOT of training, paperwork, getting acquainted with campus resources, and making connections. Some of these have involved seeking approval to take on graduate students, not just from my department, but students from other departmental programs that want their research to center around my lab’s specialties. UMaine strives to provide interdisciplinary opportunities for students, and as such, encourage multiple cooperating positions. In addition to being able to bring on grad students through the School of Food and Agriculture, I have just been approved as faculty in the Graduate School for Biomedical Sciences and Engineering, and have another cooperating position pending.
My work now spans three major research priorities. My lab will focus on the gut microbiome of livestock, and how microbes can be used to promote animal health and production. This will take shape in a variety of ways, including through global collaborations (more on those as they develop, but many of my previous rumen collaborations that began at Montana State are included in that). I’ll be taking on several graduate and undergraduate students in 2020 for these projects.
Through ongoing collaboration on projects led by Drs. Fabian Menalled and Tim Seipel at Montana State University, I’ll be participating in research to understand climate change and farming practices on wheat production and soil microbes. I am a graduate committee member for Tindall Ouverson, who is completing her master’s at MSU.
I’ll also be collaborating with researchers on microbes in the human gut. Through ongoing collaborations with researchers at the Institute for Health in the Built Environment (primarily those at BioBE) at the University of Oregon, I’ll be looking at infectious disease transmission and building design. And I’m currently developing new collaborations with researchers at Husson University, University of Maine, University of Vermont, and other institutions, which will investigate the interaction between diet, gut microbes, and human health. I’ll be taking on several graduate and undergraduate students in 2020 for these projects.
I published a record 10 papers this year! I don’t expect to achieve this again anytime soon: over the spring and summer I was only working half-time, and with the rest of my time I was doggedly writing up previous project results, overseeing undergraduate authors, and emailing co-authors for revisions. Writing or managing the writing of a manuscript takes a significant amount of work. Even when experiments or field trials are completed within days, weeks, or months, it may takes years to process, analyze, and measure the samples you collect, as well as complete the statistical analysis. You might encounter technical problems, or need to validate a method for use with your research. After all, much of what researchers do is trying new things, as there isn’t always a well-validated protocol to follow and you need to come up with something new. Thus, at least half of the publications from 2019 were wrapping up experiments that had occurred as far back as 2014!
Because of the time span, it meant I published on a variety of topics, from the effect of diet on rumen bacteria in sheep, to the effect of farming practices on bacteria in soil, to the effect of chemicals from vinyl floors on bacteria in dust. It meant a LOT of reading for me, to appraise and condense the relevant literature for each project: my citations list might contain up to 100 other papers!
Teaching
Over the summer, I taught “Microbes and Social Equity” at The University of Oregon for the Clark Honors College. In just four weeks, the students, a few guest speakers, and I collectively wrote a paper to introduce the topic. We submitted it to the journal PloS Biology, and it was accepted for publication in their special call, Microbiomes Across Ecosystems. You can read it here. In the first month, it’s been viewed nearly 5,000 times!
I am developing new coursework for the University of Maine, including AVS 254 Introduction to Animal Microbiomes, which will be taught annually beginning in Fall 2020. This spring, I’ll be teaching a ‘special topics’ class, which will be the preliminary version of a class I am currently developing: DNA Sequence Data Analysis Lab, which will teach students the programming and analysis required to understand complex DNA sequence data, including amplicon, whole-genome, and metagenomics datasets. The special topics version is limited enrollment, and a way to beta-test the class before spending the significant amount of time required to develop a new course. I’ll be sharing more info about the classes as they develop.
Presentations and Travel
In May, I again presented my BioBE research to the Institute for Health in the Built Environment
Consortium meeting in Portland, OR. It was a quiet summer for me, but I did attend the Gordon Research Conference on Animal-Microbe Symbioses in Vermont, which showcased fascinating research on the ways that humans and animals interact with the microbes that inhabit our bodies. In October, I had a whirlwind week-long trip which involved giving a presentation in Monterrey, Mexico, then a different presentation in Reno, NV the following day, then heading to Bozeman, MT to catch up with collaborators and teach bioinformatics to Tindall. All of the meetings, seminars, and training was very valuable, but the best part, hands-down, was going to Matacanes canyon.
Outreach
Over 2019, I gave more than ten (not all have been published) interviews on my research! This included a live radio interview, and two podcasts: all new experiences for me.
- “UMaine prof: Inequity is creating a gut microbe gap.” Mike Tipping and Ben Chin, Maine People’s Alliance. Dec 20, 2019.
- “Women in Science – Implicit Bias“. Ida Hardin. Dec 13, 2019.
- “Inequity takes a toll on your gut microbes, too.” Sue Ishaq, The Conversation, Dec 4, 2019.
- Picked up by The Telegraph, Alton, Illinois, and other agencies
- Included on UMaine news
- “All people have a right to healthy gut microbes.” Paige Jarreau and Signe Asberg, Lifeapps. Dec 3, 2019.
- “Rich People Have Access to Better Microbes Than Poor People, Researchers Say.” Becky Ferreira, Vice. Nov 26, 2019.
- “Microbiome is a Human Right.” Heather Smith, Sierra. Nov 26, 2019.
- “Life, liberty—and access to microbes?” Press release for Plos Biology. Nov 19, 2019.
- “Study finds season an important factor in soil microbe sampling.” Erin Miller, University of Maine. Nov 6, 2019.
- “cUriOus: Buildings Have Microbiomes, Too!” The Jefferson Exchange with Geoffrey Riley. Mar 8, 2019.
- ” The Great Indoors: Interior Ecology Under the Looking Glass.” Alex Notman, University of Oregon College of Design. Jan 14, 2019.
Blog
I published 30 posts this year, including this one, although with ~11,000 words total, I had less to talk about. I anticipate that will change when my lab gets rolling. The most popular post this year continues to be Work-Life Balance: What Do Professors Do?, self explanatory, and the least popular this year is I Accepted a New Position in Soil Microbiology and Agroeconomy!, which makes sense as it was an announcement from 2016 about a post-doc position I’d accepted.
My site had its most popular year, with >4,000 visitors taking >6,000 views, represented by 109 countries. In total, my site has had > 10,000 visitors and >15,000 views since Jan 2016
Life
If you’ve read this far, you can probably guess how hectic my life has been this year. At the same time, it’s been gorgeously complex. I finally made it down to see Crater Lake in Oregon, went powder skiing in the Rockies in Utah, drove through the dramatic beauty of the Rockies in Alberta, made my first visit to Mexico and was immersed in the isolated beauty of a mountain canyon in Matacanes.
I read the debut science-fiction novel of one very dear friend of mine and non-debut science non-fiction novel of another dear friend, and took an excessive amount of selfies with my dog.
And… we bought our very first house!!
Looking Ahead
This Year in Review, I have the clearest idea of where my 2020 is heading. With a new lab and new classes, I’ll be happily well-occupied. I’ll be obtaining 3+ quotes to buy each piece of lab equipment (if it cost more that $6,000) and then waiting two months for it to arrive, troubleshooting R problems and revising scientific manuscripts written by first-time authors, I’ll be training my new brood of students in the lab, and I’ll be sharing my experiences here! Stay tuned!
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