January 4, 2024
Our paper on "Microbial transmission in the social microbiome and host health and disease" is out today in Cell. Congratulations to graduate student Amar Sarkar and post-baccalaureate researcher Cameron McInroy for spearheading this effort!
November 11, 2023
Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Mira-Rose Kingsbury Lee for being named a 2024 Rhodes Scholar! So exciting!
October 18, 2023
Our lab is featured in the November-December 2023 edition of Harvard Magazine. Click here for the article by Nikki Greenwood and here to see the cover art created by Sam Falconer!
August 1, 2023
Congratulations to Rachel on her promotion to Associate Professor!
May 4, 2023
Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Molly Chiang for winning a 2023 Hoopes Prize for her senior thesis, Novel DNA Metabarcoding Pipeline to Define Diet and Investigate Its Relationship with Gut Microbiome Composition in Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Congratulations also to Emily Venable for co-advising Molly in her thesis journey!
April 25, 2023
Rachel gave the keynote address at the annual Rutgers University Microbiome Program (RUMP) Retreat. An exciting day learning about diverse and outstanding new research in the microbiome sciences!
April 23, 2023
Congratulations to former undergraduate thesis writer Andrew Li on his Masters of Music from NEC in piano performance! Andrew's degree recital -- including works from Shubert, Mussorgsky and Chopin -- was a spectacular exhibition of technical and musical mastery. Really unbelievable! And now, he's off to medical school!
April 6, 2023
Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Mira-Rose Kingsbury Lee on the premiere of her original musical "Atalanta" at the ART's Loeb Experimental Theater! Inspired by the autobiography of Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, the musical was complex, witty, and full of memorable music. I am still humming "Who's Who in the News" ... Congratulations, Mira, on a magnificent achievement!
April 5, 2023
Rachel gave a special seminar at Penn State, co-hosted by the Department of Anthropology and Penn State Microbiome Center, two powerhouse programs. A fun intersection of folks with interests in human evolution and the human gut microbiome -- just like us!
March 31, 2023
Rachel gave a special seminar at UMass Amhert, co-hosted by the Department of Food Science, Department of Nutrition, and Department of Microbiology. A wonderful opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and sample the famed UMass Amherst campus food! (Yes, it's really good!)
March 27, 2023
Rachel gave an invited seminar at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy addressing dietary influences on host-microbial interactions in health. Always useful to ground-truth some of our nutrition-focused findings with folks invested in this space!
October 29, 2022
Rachel gave an invited talk at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Microbiome Meeting. With numerous first-rate research talks already presented, and with the privilege of being the final long-format speaker of the meeting, she decided to change her talk at the last minute in order to step back and provide a more synthetic view of outstanding questions in the field. A really fun and inspiring meeting!
August 24, 2022
Congratulations, Dr. Cary Allen-Blevins, on finishing your Ph.D.! A fitting culmination to a long and rich graduate research program focused on human variation in breastmilk oligosaccharides and their effects on infant-microbiome interactions in energy metabolism and immunity.
August 16, 2022
Our collaborative study with Mike MacArthur and others from the lab of the late James Mitchell at ETH Zürich ("Multiomics assessment of dietary protein titration reveals altered hepatic glucose utilization") is out today in Cell Reports!
June 12, 2022
Rachel delivered an In-Depth Lecture ("Rationale and risks of rewilding: ecological plasticity of the gut microbiome as a double-edged sword") at the American Society for Microbiology (ADM) Microbe conference.
June 6, 2022
Congratulations to our own undergraduate thesis researcher Andrew Li on making the quarterfinals of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition! Just unbelievable talent! [Andrew's thesis was due the same day as the Cliburn preliminary round ... alas, per ardua ad astra!]
May 24, 2022
Rachel was part of a trio of speakers in the Charles M. Mansbach II, MD, Memorial Lecture session at the American Gastroenterological Association, Digestive Diseases Week. We all wondered, from different perspectives: Under what conditions is it beneficial versus neutral or detrimental to restore depleted gut microbiomes?
May 2, 2022
Rachel has won the 2022 Roslyn Abramson Award for "excellence and sensitivity in the teaching of undergraduates" and will be allocating the $10,000 prize to undergraduate lab research and Teaching Fellow training.
April 22, 2022
Congratulations, Dr. Katia Chadaideh, on finishing your Ph.D.! We are so proud of you and look forward to benefiting from all that you will discover!
March 30, 2022
Laura and Rachel delivered talks and served as panelists in the virtual arm of the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists.
March 24, 2022
Emily and Rachel delivered podium presentations at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists in Denver, Colorado. It was so nice to see everyone in person again!
March 12, 2022
Rachel gave a plenary lecture on the gut microbial effects of food processing at the Gut Microbiome for Health World Summit in Washington, D.C.
February 11, 2022
Rachel gave a seminar on "Ecological plasticity of the gut microbiome: a double-edged sword" in the Organismic & Evolutionary Biology (OEB) Seminar Series at UMass Amherst.
October 5, 2021
Amar, Rachel, and other collaborators have a new paper out today in Trends in Molecular Medicine on the role of the gut microbiome in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 outcomes. (Link)
September 24, 2021
Our collaborative paper with the Liu Lab (Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School) on gut microbial predictors of healthy aging is out now in Nutrients. (Link)
September 21, 2021
As part of the HEB lunchtime seminar series, our lab gave a chalk talk seminar on gut microbial buffering of human energy balance and its implications for human evolution!
September 13, 2021
Our collaborative paper with the Huttenhower Lab (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) introducing SparseDOSSA2, a statistical model for describing and simulating microbial communities, is out now in PLoS Computational Biology. (Link)
July 28, 2021
Rachel will serve as a panelist in a U.S. congressional briefing on federal funding for microbiome research, organized jointly by the American Society for Nutrition and the American Society for Microbiology. Click here for more information and to register.
July 7, 2021
Rachel spoke with the New York Times regarding the important debate surrounding the usefulness of “rewilding” the gut microbiome. (Link)
May 3, 2021
Laura will deliver a talk ("Mediation of developmental tradeoffs by early-life disruption of the gut microbiota”) at the Microbiome Epidemiology Working Group, hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
April 21, 2021
Katia will deliver a podium talk entitled "Fats are differentially fattening: Host-microbial interactions in energy harvest from dietary lipids” at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists Virtual Meeting.
April 21, 2021
Emily will deliver a podium talk entitled "High energy expenditure causes shifts in the gut microbiota that buffer host energy balance" at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists Virtual Meeting.
April 12, 2021
Rachel will deliver an podium talk entitled "Humans and chimpanzees exhibit divergent patterns of gut microbial diversity in early life" at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists Virtual Meeting.
April 9, 2021
Katia will deliver an invited talk (“Host-microbe interactions mediate differential energy gain from dietary fat”) at the Meeting on the Evolutionary Mismatch Hypothesis in the Genomics Era, hosted by Princeton University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
March 31, 2021
As part of the Tufts University Biology Seminar Series, Rachel will give a talk titled “Alternative energy: gut microbial buffering of energy balance.”
March 26, 2021
Rachel will deliver a talk entitled “Ecological plasticity of the gut microbiome: a double-edged sword” at the CIFAR Annual Symposium, Humans and the Microbiome.
March 23, 2021
Rachel and Aspen spoke to the Harvard Gazette about their new paper on domestication, the gut microbiome, and human industrialization out in eLife. (Link)
March 22, 2021
Katia will deliver a talk ("Dietary fat type drives host-microbial interactions in energy gain and inflammation”) at the Microbiome Epidemiology Working Group, hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
February 22, 2021
Rachel will deliver an invited talk ("Ecological sensitivity of the gut microbiome") at the Broom Center for Demography seminar series at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
February 8, 2021
Aspen, Emily, Rachel and other collaborators have a new paper (“Age patterning in wild chimpanzee gut microbiota diversity reveals differences from humans in early life”) out today in Current Biology.
September 1, 2020
Amar Sarkar has joined the Nutritional & Microbial Ecology Lab as a new graduate student! Amar comes to us via Cambridge and Oxford, where be obtained graduate training in neuroscience and the gut-brain axis. Welcome, Amar!
October 25, 2019
The newest member of the Nutritional & Microbial Ecology Lab has arrived! Welcome, Bennett Patrick Slyconish!
April 22, 2017
Rachel will deliver an invited lecture ("Food and its form: cooking shapes the gut microbiome") in the Wiley Symposium at the 86th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in New Orleans (Link).
April 15, 2017
Rachel will deliver an invited talk ("Partners in chyme: dietary manipulation of the gut microbiome") at the 2017 Microbial Sciences Initiative Symposium (Link).
April 6, 2017
Rachel delivered a seminar in the Department of Immunology & Microbiology at McGill University in Montreal. A 24-hour whirlwind of engaging chats with faculty and trainees, plus an opportunity to reconnect with close friends!
March 22, 2017
Rachel delivered a keynote address ("Dietary manipulation of the gut microbiome") at the 2017 MIT-Harvard Microbiome Symposium: Health and Ventures in the Microbiome (Link). A showcase of translational research, organized by an incredible team of students!
November 3, 2016
Rachel delivered a plenary lecture ("Cooking shapes the structure and function of the gut microbiome") at The New York Academy of Sciences symposium on Microbial Influences in Cardio-Metabolic Diseases (Link). A stimulating day of exciting talks, plus an amazing 270° view of Manhattan!
August 22, 2016
Our brand new Nutritional & Microbial Ecology Lab in the Peabody Museum (Link) is officially certified for occupancy. Let the research roll!
June 16, 2016
Cell Press named Rachel's paper "Diet dominates host genotype in shaping the murine gut microbiota" to the Cell Host & Microbe "Best of 2015" list. Link PDF Cover
April 1, 2016
Rachel gave a seminar for the Evolutionary Anthropology Colloquium Series at Duke University. A wonderful opportunity to connect with colleagues and collaborators old and new!
February 11, 2016
In partnership with the Leakey Foundation, Rachel hosted a science outreach for students at Salesian High School in Richmond, California. Career development, human origins, and food tasting, oh my!
December 8, 2015
Rachel delivered a Leakey Foundation Lecture ("Cooking for calories: food processing and the shape of human energy gain”) at the California Academy of Sciences (Link). A fantastic evening of science for specialists and curious members of the community alike!
September 8, 2015
The youngest member of the Nutritional & Microbial Ecology Lab has arrived! Welcome, Theo Carmody Slyconish!
