Lots of Good News in the Hartman Lab!

We’ve received a lot of good news in our lab this week, and want to share!

Austin and Cindy will both have talks at the American Society for Reproductive Immunology (ASRI) annual meeting in St. Paul, MN this May!

Austin will be presenting a talk titled “Protecting mothers and neonates from Rift Valley Fever: RVFV-delNSs/NSm vaccine prevents vertical transmission and neonatal mortality following maternal vaccination.” In addition, Austin received a Trainee Travel Award to attend this meeting!

Cindy will be presenting a talk titled “Human trophoblasts and placenta explants are susceptible to Oropouche virus infection.”

Cade and Rachael will both be attending the annual meeting of the American Society for Virology being held in Montreal, Quebec (Canada) in July.

Cade was selected for a flash talk and poster presentation titled “Role of Lrp1 in Oropouche virus pathogenesis in mice".

Rachael will be presenting a talk titled “Role of Lrp1 on myeloid cells in infection and dissemination of Rift Valley fever virus".

Zach and his “grad school reveal” during Hartman lab meeting!

Zach, one of our technicians and former Hartman Lab undergraduate student, has officially committed to UNC BBSP for his PhD! Zach has been working on neuropathogenesis and entry-related projects within our lab.

Science Outreach at Carnegie Science Center, 2025

Drs. Cindy McMillen, Rachael Rush and Kaleigh Connors — alongside current IDM PhD students (Daniel Lane, Christine Crasto, Melaina Jacoby and Bethany Hoschar) — volunteered last Friday at the Carnegie Science Center SciTech Day! They represented both the Center for Vaccine Research and the Department of Infectious Disease and Microbiology at Pitt Public Health.

This event connects middle- and high-school students from greater Pittsburgh with real-world scientists, engineers, and other STEM professionals. The entire day-long event allows students to participate in demonstrations and activity booths hosted by exhibiting organizations.

At the CVR/IDM booth, we had swag including tote bags, stickers and coloring pages, as well as information about Pitt Public Health. Visiting students were able to learn how to perform serial dilutions with a pipet, how to extract DNA from a strawberry, and how to properly remove gloves covered in shaving cream!

We always enjoy partnering with the Carnegie Science Center, and look forward to participating in future SciTech Days in Pittsburgh! H2P!

Top-Tier Health Sciences Papers of 2023!

Our 2023 publication in Nature Communications, which found that a human monoclonal antibody against Rift Valley fever virus protected mother and offspring from infection and vertical transmission, was selected as a Top-Tier Health Science paper for 2023 by the Senior Vice Chancellor’s office at Pitt Health Sciences!

Dr. Amy Hartman was invited to give a 10-minute lightning talk on our paper from 2023 titled A highly potent human neutralizing antibody prevents vertical transmission of Rift Valley fever virus in a rat model. This project was lead by Dr. Cindy McMillen, in collaboration with Drs. Nathanial Chapman (now at UNC) and James E. Crowe, Jr., at the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center.

View the original write-up on this publication here!

Welcome Dr. Kim Bunce!

Earlier this year we welcomed in our newest colleague, Dr. Kim Bunce, as a Research Scientist in the Hartman lab! Kim comes to our lab with diverse research experiences, including establishment and oversight of clinical molecular diagnostics laboratories. She will be working across all projects in our lab.

Kim says “I was born and raised in the South Hills in Pittsburgh and attended the University of Rochester in New York. After graduation, I moved south to Houston, Texas, where I earned my PhD in Immunology at the University of Texas Houston Health Sciences Center-MD Anderson Cancer Center. Back in Pittsburgh, I live in the South Hills with my husband, kids and cats.  I enjoy reading, hiking, true crime and all things history.”

Introducing Dr. Connors!

Kaleigh successfully defended her PhD in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology from Pitt Public Health on January 6th, 2025. The room was packed, as was Zoom, including with family and friends.

Afterwards, we celebrated her accomplishments at the CVR and Cinderlands in Lawrenceville!

Amy said the following about Kaleigh prior to her public seminar:

“Kaleigh had the unfortunate luck to begin graduate school in the Fall of 2020 during the middle of the COVID pandemic, and she did all of her first semester classes on zoom. She rotated in my lab that fall and then committed in May of 2021. She passed her prelim exam in June 2021 and her Comprehensive exam in June of 2022. Kaleigh came in wanting to work on the neuropathogenesis project, which had suffered from some neglect within my lab, and she was the perfect person to come in and pick it up! She already had an MS degree so she had a certain element of maturity and experience that was greatly appreciated. Throughout her time in my lab, she brought new expertise and models in, and this required forging new collaborations in neurobiology such as Zak Wills and Dino D’Aiuto. She has done a ton of work to establish, characterize, and then use the models that she will tell you about in her defense. All of the beautiful images from my lab come from Kaleigh’s hands on the fluorescence confocal microscope! She already has 2 first-author publications and has another one close to submission. Kaleigh also trained undergraduate and MS students as well as contributed to several ongoing collaborative projects. Kaleigh also served in several leadership roles during her graduate studies, including with the students in IDM and on the DEI committee for American Society for Virology. I am excited for Kaleigh to stay in the lab as a post-doc to finish up some ongoing projects and also bring additional new technologies to the lab!”

Wrapping up 2024

2024 CVR Holiday party was unmatched, as always, although I was only there in spirit….check out additional photos here.

Our group has grown so large in the past 1-2 years! We love the UC7 techs joining us

November 1st

I got to do a fun thing. I was nominated for an Ascending Star award through the Senior Vice Chancellor’s office. I gave my lecture on November 1st.

This allowed (nay, forced) me to look back at everything the lab has done over the past 10+ years. It was really fun to put together - all of the people who have come through the lab are who made this happen. I am forever thankful for them. And for the support of my family, without it none of this would happen. My family was able to attend, which was very special for me.

Dr. Shekhar

Hello, christmas card photo ;-)

Paul, Dr. Shekhar, and Suresh

My family, parents, and in-laws

Preprints (x2): Oropouche virus

Oropouche orthobunyavirus (OROV) - a little-known oft-ignored peribunyavirus - has stepped up on stage to make itself known over the past year. https://www.science.org/content/article/why-did-obscure-virus-explode-latin-america-new-study-offers-clues

We have 2 pre-prints up on BioRXIV related to OROV.

The first one was posted last month. Kaleigh, Zach, and Maris have been working with OROV on the neuro angle for a while now. Since our publication of Lrp1 as a receptor for OROV, we’ve been studying its role in neuronal infection. Twitter thread on this paper is here.

Connors, K.A., M.R. Pedlow, Z.D. Frey, J.J. McGaughey, G.K. Amarasinghe, W.P. Duprex, L. D’Aiuto, Z.P. Wills, and A.L. Hartman. Characterization of neural infection by Oropouche orthobunyavirus. Posted 10/12/24. bioRxiv https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.11.617875v1. (Preprint)

Since then, we migrated to BlueSky. Find us at: @roguerifter.bsky.social

Cindy now has a preprint that just went live! This is placental work related to her K01. Great collab with Crissy Megli! More to come, including a bluesky thread!! Can’t stop my excitement!!!!!

Megli, C, R.K. Zack, J. McGaughey, R.M. Hoehl, T. Snisky, A.L. Hartman, and C.M. McMillen. Oropouche virus infects human placenta explants and trophoblast organoids. Posted 11/17/24. bioRxiv. 2024.11.16.623866 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.16.623866v1.

Thankful!

We have a lot of talented folks in the lab. For “Boss’s Day”, I received the Pittsburgh-famous burnt almond torte AND homemade edible BL/6 and CD1 mice! So thankful to work with this great crew :-)