Crosspost: Everyone should read this piece by Ed Yong: Norm Pace Blew The Door Off The Microbial World – microBEnet: the microbiology of the Built Environment network

Crosspost: just pointing people to this post I wrote on microBEnet which may be of interest:

Everyone should read this piece by Ed Yong: Norm Pace Blew The Door Off The Microbial World – microBEnet: the microbiology of the Built Environment network

Crosspost: #MoBE17: Microbiology of the Built Environment Research & Applications Symposium – microBEnet: the microbiology of the Built Environment network

Crossposting from microBEnet

#MoBE17: Microbiology of the Built Environment Research & Applications Symposium – microBEnet: the microbiology of the Built Environment network

This meeting should be of interest to many out there. A great collection of speakers and topics. Keynotes by Ed Yong, Susan Lynch and Marc Edwards. Registration deadline is September 1.

MoBE 2017

Microbiology of the Built Environment
Research and Applications Symposium

October 10 - October 12, 2017

NAS Building Washington, DC

More detail here.

Registration is free and open until September 1, 2017.

Sponsors Include: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, NAS, Zymo Corporation, Standards in Genomics Sciences, Microbiome Journal, NASA, US Green Buildings Council

Agenda

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Tuesday October 10th

Keynote.

• Ed Yong (The Atlantic). A science writer’s view of the MoBE field.

Kick-off reception 

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Wednesday October 11th

Introduction

• Lynn M. Schriml (MoBE 2017 symposium chairman, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Institute for Genome Sciences)
• Paula J. Olsiewski (MoBE Program Director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation)

Keynote

• Susan Lynch (UCSF School of Medicine). Chronic Inflammatory Disease and the Built Environment

Session 1: MoBE Science Here and Now

• Jonathan Eisen (UC Davis). The microbiology of the built environment network (microBEnet) and perspectives on the MoBE field
• Jessica Green (University of Oregon). Designing healthier spaces and buildings
• Lisa Brenner (University of Colorado). Mental Health and the Microbiome of the Build Environment

Session 2: Implications of MoBE for Health and Design

• Elaine Hubal (EPA). Session Chair
• Shelly Miller (University of Colorado). Building Engineering Controls for Improving Occupant Health: Mitigating Airborne Particles, Toxic Gases, and Infectious Aerosols.
• Rachel Adams (BIMERC). Sources and quantities of microbes and mVOCs indoors.
• Karen Dannemiller (Ohio State University). The nexus of housing characteristics, indoor microbial communities, and asthma severity
• Mark Mendell (California Department of Health, LBNL). Adverse and beneficial effects of the indoor microbiome – current implications for health or design?

Session 3: Public Health and Indoor Microbial Communities

• Diane Gold, Session Chair
• Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello (NYU School of Medicine). Microbial Biogeography of Homes across urbanization gradients
• Brandon Bubba Brooks (Kaleido Biosciences). The NICU microbiome’s role in neonate gut colonization
• Jane Carlton (NYU School of Medicine). A city view: ATM's, parasites and wastewater

Session 4: MoBE Insights on Microbial Exposure

• Tina Bahadori (EPA) Chemical Safety for Sustainability Research Program Leader, Session Chair
• Eric Alm (MIT). Sewers, microbes and drugs
• Emmanuel Mongodin (Institute for Genome Sciences, UMSOM). Microbial function and built environments
• David Mills (UC Davis). Microbiology of food production built environments: dairies and wineries

Panel Discussion: Myth and Reality of MoBE Manipulation

• Rob Knight (UCSD), Moderator
• Rita Colwell (University of Maryland)
• Jeffrey Siegel (U of T)
• Ilana Brito (Cornell)
• Jessica Green (University of Oregon)

Poster Session & Reception

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Thursday October 12th

Welcome

• Jordan Peccia (Yale). Gordon Conference Announcement.

Keynote

• Marc Edwards (Virginia Tech). MoBE, Public Health and the Flint Water Crisis

Session 5 - From MoBE Research to MoBE Applications

• Scott Kelley (San Diego State University). Session Chair.
• Jack Gilbert (University of Chicago). From Hospitals to Forensic Applications
• Richard Shaughnessy (University of Tulsa). From Home to School: Tribal Indoor Air Quality Intervention Study
• Anders Benteson Nygaard (Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences). Bacteria in Norwegian kindergartens: Small children and their microbial environments

Session 6: The Building Science – MoBE nexus

• Richard Corsi (University of Texas at Austin). Session Chair.
• Richard Corsi (University of Texas at Austin). Building Science ∩ Science in Buildings (or why MoBE > Robots)
• Amy Pruden (Virginia Tech). Towards Prebiotic/Probiotic Control of the Microbiome in Built Water Systems
• Betsy Pugel (NASA). Tiny houses: Planetary protection-focused materials selection for spaceflight hardware surfaces
• Kent Duffy (SRG Partnership). The influences of microbial research on architectural practice
• Wendy J Goodson (Air Force Research Laboratory). Microbiomes of Military Cargo Aircraft and their Connection to Biocorrosion

Session 7 - NAS Microbiomes of the Built Environment Consensus Study

• Katherine Bowman (NAS). Session Chair.
• Joan Bennett (Rutgers University) : NAS MoBE study overview MoBE outcomes, perspectives and future studies

Panel Discussion: Charting MoBE Research Priorities

• Jonathan Eisen (UC Davis). Moderator.
• Jordan Peccia (Yale)
• Norman Pace (University of Colorado)
• Claire Fraser (Institute for Genome Sciences, UMSOM)

Meeting Closing

• Paula Olsiewski (Alfred P. Sloan Foundation).

Important wisdom of the month, from NPR

The Massry Prize is a #YAMMA (yet another mostly male award) #MatildaEffect #Massry #GenderBias

I was really pleased to see the announcement that the 2017 Massry Prize was awarded to Norm Pace, Jeffrey Gordon and Rob Knight.  Alas, then someone pointed me to the web site listing past winners of the prize. Massry Prize.  And I compiled the list (with some help from Wikipedia)

Massry Prize

Yet Another Mostly Male Award

YAMMA

1. 1996 Michael Berridge 
2. 1997 Judah Folkman 
3. 1998 Mark Ptashne 
4. 1999 Gunter Blobel 
5. 2000 Leland H. Hartwell 
6. 2001 Avram Hershko
7. 2001 Alexander Varshavsky 
8. 2002 Mario Capecchi
9. 2002 Oliver Smithies 
10. 2003 Roger Kornberg
11. 2003 David Allis 
12. 2003 Michael Grunstein 
13. 2004 Ada Yonath 
14. 2004 Harry Noller 
15. 2005 Andrew Fire
16. 2004 Craig Mello 
17. 2004 David Baulcombe 
18. 2006 Akira Endo
19. 2007 Michael Phelps 
20. 2008 Shinya Yamanaka
21. 2008 James A. Thomson
22. 2008 Rudolf Jaenisch 
23. 2009 Gary Ruvkun
24. 2009 Victor Ambros 
25. 2010 Randy Schekman 
26. 2011 F. Ulrich Hartl 
27. 2011 Arthur Horwich
28. 2012 Michael Rosbash
29. 2012 Jeffrey C. Hall
30. 2012 Michael W. Young 
31. 2013 Michael Sheetz
32. 2013 James A. Spudich 
33. 2013 Ronald D. Vale 
34. 2014 Steven Rosenberg
35. 2014 Zelig Eshhar 
36. 2014 James P. Allison
37. 2015 Philippe Horvath
38. 2015 Jennifer Doudna 
39. 2015 Emmanuelle Charpentier
40. 2016 Gero Miesenböck
41. 2016 Peter Hegemann
42. 2016 Karl Deisseroth
43. 2017 Rob Knight
44. 2017 Jeff Gordon
45. 2017 Norm Pace

42 male

3 female

I colored them based on my inference of gender. I realize that I may have some of this wrong and that using a binary system is not right in many cases but I think this certainly shows a pattern.  I also realize there are many possible explanations for the imbalance here but I think it is reasonable to consider that bias against women may be a component of this. 

Some useful reading in regard to prizes in the sciences:

• American Council on Science and Health: Why Don't Women Win The Nobel Prize?
• Heather Metcalf: Improving Recognition Through Awards: How to Mitigate Bias in Awards
• Anne E. Lincoln, Stephanie Pincus, Janet Bandows Koster, 
  Phoebe S. Leboy: 
  The Matilda Effect in science: Awards and prizes in the US, 1990s and 2000s

Not sure what to do here with this information.  I deeply respect the award winners here and think they are highly deserving of important science awards.  But it pains me to see such a big skew in the gender balance of winners of this Massry Prize and think, sadly, that there is likely some kind of bias at work here.  When there is a bias against recognizing the achievements of women it is known as the Matilda Effect.  I suggest everyone involved in handing out awards such as this, and anyone reporting on such awards, should read up on it.

I note - I posted the gender ratio of winners of this award to the Gender Avenger site. See below:

#SciFoo 2017 here I come

Well, I am going back to SciFoo. This is a meeting that happens at Google, is organized by O'Reilly Media and Nature and Google and Digital Science and others.  I went in 2012, 2007 and 2006.  And every single time it was life altering.  I will try to post while there but it can be distracting ...Here are some notes and posts from the past scifoos I have attended.

Storify Wakelet I made for 2017: https://wke.lt/w/s/wJAWSZ


2006

• SciFoo Camp, the prequel
• SciFoo Camp impressions Day 1
• My 18 month old daughter is in love with google
• SciFoo Camp Highlight1 - HowToons and Science Education Reform
• SciFoo Camp Impressions Day2
• SciFoo Camp Day 3

2007

• SciFoo, SciFoolery, Nature, O'Reilly, Google, and More
• Train to Scifoo
• SciFoo Camp Day 1
• SciFoo Camp Day 1 - More notes
• SciFoo Day 2 - Morning
• SciFoo Camp Day 2 - Afternoon
• SciFoo Camp - The End and New Beginnings
• Open Access dinosaurs and way to go Paul Sereno

2008 - didn't go to SciFoo but repercussions still felt

• Can a spoof be scooped by reality?
• Confessions of an April Fool and the Dope on Brain Doping

2012

• Wakelet https://wke.lt/w/s/i7lh3
• A very deep blog post: Holy s$&# - I am going back to #SciFoo