BoP 2025 has officially ended! Students got their official certificates this morning and had the opportunity to say a few words. We are grateful for all the work that was put in to make this course possible and we are proud to be part of the BoP alumni network 🥳

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BoP 2025 Class Photo!

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It’s the final countdown for the final day of lab work for BoP!

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Today Camila Coelho joined us as the final speaker for BoP 2025! She talked to us about vaccines, parasites, and the fantastic work her lab is doing!

Thank you to all the guest speakers who joined us to teach and get to know this year’s class/instructors/TAs/CAs!

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Only so many hours left of lab work and time to present our posters!

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Our penultimate guest lecturer Kirk Jensen is here this morning telling us about Toxo, its different strains and virulence, and the impact of mouse and parasite genetics! 🐭

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Fernanda Novais was our morning speaker and we learned about T cells, cutaneous leishmaniasis, and Hypoxia!

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We are fortune this year to have had three course directors! Our current and final fearless leader this year is Melissa Lodoen who studies Toxo gondii infection 🧠

This is Vern and Melissa’s final year as course directors for BoP!

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This morning we had Irah King come talk to us about Type II immunity/Helminths, and now has joined us at the bench this evening to help with some Ascaris work! 🪱

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Last week we started our final module, Immunology! After a great introduction to the topic by Phillip Scott, students broke into Team Ascaris, led by Pedro Gazzinelli, and Team Leishmania, led by Jude Uzonna! Pictures of full days and many great lecturers incoming!

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The big reveal of our BoP 2025 t-shirts! What do folks recognize in the design?

Created by the talented BoP student Sophia Hernandez!

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Thank you to Dr. Alan Sher for this evenings Englund Lecture! A personal and BoP History, the renaissance of parasitology (and immunoparasitology), and some cake to celebrate the 45th anniversary of BoP!

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Dr. Alan Sher will give the Paul Englund Endowed Lecture at BoP at 5pm eastern time. Please email mlodoen[at]uci[dot]edu if you would like a zoom link for the talk!

Nsa Dada was our morning lecturer and told us about her work with the mosquito microbiome! 🦟

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David Sasseri joined us virtually for an introduction to symbiosis and then a focus down on Wolbachia 🪳🕷️🩸🦠

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BoP 2025 cohort!

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This morning the BoP students get a hundred year overview of “sleeping sickness” from Isabel Roditi

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Practicing microinjections on ticks! Soon we’ll be injecting double stranded RNA for a gene knockdown experiment 🔬

PC: Alessandro R.

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Katie Gondim joins us this morning to teach us about the “kissing bug” Rhodnius prolixus, a vector insect

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Cell Biology Module complete! BBQ time!

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Etymology word of the day with our speaker and co-director Vern!

Parasite: from the Greek ‘Parasitos’ meaning: “one who eats at the table of another”

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After every new speaker's lecture, the BoP class gets the opportunity to ask the speaker questions (without faculty, TA, CA, etc) and they range from career and personal advice, how the course has changed their lives, and the hardships of research and academia!

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Learning about the history and use of Expansion Microscopy with Sabrina Absalon for our morning lecture

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Megan and Michael with the Cape Cod Mosquito Control Project took their module out to collect wild mosquitos (and horseflies)!

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On the hunt for wild planaria!

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Late night pupa picking

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Some of the students are getting trained to use the confocal for imaging our respective parasites of interest

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Lecture today by Katy Ralston on entamoeba! Learning about the awesome process of amoeba “nibbling”

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Thinking of targets during the life cycle of malaria for drug development with Meg Phillips this morning

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A night of scope work! 🐌🦟

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