2024 Year in Review
Learning, teaching, connecting
We rang in 2025 with an international flair this year - our family hosted three Australian students who were part of a basketball travel group. My kids had a great time showing them around and quizzing them about what was the same and what was different. We tried their Tim Tams and Vegemite, and they tried our s’mores. It was a great experience for all, and a perfect way to cap off a a great year which took me not only around the us, but to Europe and Asia as well.
Just like with all aspects of infectious disease, it’s critical that genomic epidemiology is integrated across all borders. I was so fortunate in 2024 to be able to meet practitioners from all around the world at conferences and training courses. We are all facing many of the same challenges, and can learn so much from connecting with each other to learn how things work in each jurisdiction. I’m hoping to continue to fill out the map and learn more from my global colleagues in the years to come.
Connecting with the community
One of the highlights of the year for me was at the 2024 Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists conference in Pittsburgh, PA in June. I organized a genomic epi dinner meetup that was attended by 32 epidemiologists, bioinformaticians, and infection preventionists across the spectrum of governmental public health, academia, and private companies. It was such a fun evening (highly recommend https://www.hofbrauhauspittsburgh.com/) where we talked nerdy stuff, networked, and laughed (even sang happy birthday) until they closed down for the evening. Thank you to all who came and made it such a wonderful evening!
Learning through games
I was inspired by the Science Play Corner at the ESCMID Global conference to create a board game! It’s called Pathogen Pursuit: A Hospital Whodunit, and takes players through a hospital where they have to solve the outbreak by identifying the correct ward, organism, and carbapenemase. Antimicrobial resistance is such an important issue, and is also extremely complex. My goal with the game is to start to introduce concepts of how resistance can spread in a facility and how carbapanemase genes can be shared between organisms. There is still work to be done on the educational elements, and right now it’s a prototype, but I’m excited to keep thinking through ways to allow people to learn in a fun manner. If you’re interested in testing out a printable version of the game, you can find all the materials at http://pathogenpursuit.com.
Introducing different pathways to genomic epidemiology
One of the challenges with genomic epidemiology is that it’s not an established discipline in the same way as others like bioinformatics. People working in the field have come to it through many different educational and experience pathways. One of my favorite projects this year has been the “Meet a Genomic Epidemiologist” series of interviews. You can find all of them here. So far we have four interviews - I’m hoping to expand this more in the future to cover more globally as well as continue to expand areas of practice (local government, state/provincial, national, academic, hospital, etc.). If you’re currently applying genomic epidemiology to your daily work and would like to be featured, please reach out.
Teaching and learning
I was able to both attend and serve as an instructor for a number of genomic epidemiology training courses and exercises throughout the year. One thing I was able to do in some of the courses was bring in more of the basic epidemiology - introducing concepts like case definitions and odds ratios.
In June I was able to present at the CSTE conference about a training exercise we conducted. It was great to be able to share more behind the curtain on the process behind creating, implementing, and then evaluating a genomic epi training course.
Improving available resources on the genomic epi website
I’ve been working to make www.genomicepi.com a centralized resource for existing epidemiologists as well as those interested in the field, and those in adjacent fields such as bioinformatics. Here’s a quick overview of the existing sections of the site:
Training: Table of freely available recorded webinars are trainings. There are currently over 150 trainings in the table. Have trainings to add? You can them here!
Jobs: Table of genomic epidemiology-related jobs. You can use this to search for jobs, as well as get an idea of what job opportunities and requirements are by looking at the historical jobs data.
Graduate programs: This area needs work! My intention is to have it be a resource to connect those looking for graduate programs that would prepare them for a career in genomic epidemiology. Reach out if you have programs to add.
Resources: This is a new section listing out organizations, newsletters, and social media accounts related to genomic epidemiology. Did I miss some? Reach out so I can get them added!
Looking forward to 2025
Thanks to all of you for joining me this year! The newsletter went from 63 subscribers on Jan 1st 2024, to 244 at the end of the year, spanning 31 US states and every continent except Antartica. If you have anyone working at the Antarctic research station that would like to subscribe, please pass this along :)
Here’s to another year of growth and learning in the field of genomic epidemiology, have a wonderful 2025!