Amy Pickering

a shout out this holiday season to Science - the gift that keeps on giving

A bar graph showing the number of NIH New Innovator awards since their creation in 2007.

So how did it go?

NIH made 43 DP2 awards, the lowest number in a decade.

I really wish Director Bhattacharya would spend doing his actual job rather than badmouthing the agency he is charged to lead and spouting platitudes on podcasts and elsewhere.

6/7

No one is talking about global handwashing day today here! We have new WHO Global Guidelines for hand hygiene in community settings - we worked hard on them - check them out! Wash your hands with plain soap and water (no added antimicrobials) or use ABHS! cdn.who.int/media/docs/d...

Solid Evidence and Liquid Gold: Trade-Offs of Processing Settled Solids, Whole Influent, or Centrifuged Influent for Codetecting Viral, Bacterial, and Eukaryotic Pathogens in Wastewater Effective methods for simultaneously measuring viral, bacterial, protozoan, and fungal pathogens in wastewater are needed. Here, we investigate how the sample type and nucleic acid extraction protocol...

Is it Solid Evidence or Liquid Gold?? It's both for wastewater-based epidemiology! Check out our new paper - Trade-Offs of Processing Settled Solids, Whole Influent, or Centrifuged Influent for Codetecting Viral, Bacterial, and Eukaryotic Pathogens in Wastewater pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

One NIH diversity supplement grant reinstated! we'll take the win! now if we can just get our delayed NOA on the parent grant to come through...

Nice article on our new paper out in @natcomms.nature.com www.genomeweb.com/sequencing/n...

Context-Seq: CRISPR-Cas9 targeted nanopore sequencing for transmission dynamics of antimicrobial resistance - Nature Communications Evidence of antimicrobial resistance exchange between humans, animals, and the environment is limited by methodological challenges. Here, the authors report the development of ContextSeq, a Cas9 targe...

Interested in cas9 targeted sequencing of ARGs and their genomic context? check out our new paper! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

STAGGERING: This new study of 133 countries is the first to estimate the impact of all USAID’s work. In 2 decades, it has saved *92M* lives. Current cuts, if not reversed, are forecast to cost up to *14M* lives thru 2030. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

I am devastated by the recent news that HUD is pushing the National Science Foundation (NSF) out of their building. People need to speak up NOW. Thread w/ facts:

Below is email I sent to trusted @meidastouch.com @adammockler.com and my local Congressional leaders-use any/all parts that help. (1/)

Zoonotic and Environmental Sources of Infant Enteric Pathogen Infections Identified with Longitudinal Sampling Many enteric pathogens that infect young children can be zoonotic, yet the exposure risk of domestic animals living in close proximity to young children is poorly understood. Here, we longitudinally m...

New paper out! Here we find that 85% of pathogens detected in child stool are also found in animals living in close proximity. Longitudinal sampling and TAC analysis also showed pathogen transmission from animals => soil => child hands => new infections. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Today RFK Jr took the single biggest step towards destroying childhood vaccines

When @nytimes asked me in December whether RFK could kill the vaccine program - I said he’d have to remove CDCs ACIP

And… that’s exactly what he just did today

Not good-just like that we cannot trust CDC on vaccines

Kennedy Removes All C.D.C. Vaccine Panel Experts

My mom had polio, was disabled her entire life, it severely impacted my entire family & me personally, & she died way too early. She contracted it in infancy shortly before the Salk vaccine roll-out.

These attacks on vaccines are a public health nightmare.

Many people are going to get sick & die.

As Chair of the Department of Global and Public Health @healthsciences.mcgill.ca, I am pleased to share two open junior faculty positions!

mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/mcgill...

mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/mcgill...

“We were interested in understanding the role of the household environment in bacterial transmission to humans,” said Prof. @seqh2o.bsky.social.

“And our findings showed that water is actually one of the most important transmission pathways for pathogenic and drug-resistant bacteria.”

E.P.A. Plans to Shut Down the Energy Star Program

Shutting down the Energy Star program will raise your energy costs and make you sicker. There is no good policy reason to shut it down. None. It saves people lots of money and helps cut pollution. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/c...

Household drinking water identified as key pathway for bacterial transmission - Berkeley Engineering Research points to effective strategies for protecting community health

Berkeley researchers have shown that household environment might play a larger role in the transmission of gastrointestinal bacterial infections via drinking water than previously thought.

Household drinking water identified as key pathway for bacterial transmission - Berkeley Engineering Research points to effective strategies for protecting community health

engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2025/05...

nice to have a daredevilry distraction from the current fed gov research horrors

New NIH Guide Notice about foreign subawards

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Exclusive: NIH to suspend funds for research abroad as it overhauls policy Move by US biomedical agency threatens thousands of projects on infectious diseases, cancer and more.

Not a great morning. Two grant cancellations and now this: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Trump shut down program to end human waste backing into Alabama homes, calling it 'illegal DEI' A $26 million federal program to help residents of Lowndes County, Alabama, who have dealt with inadequate sewage systems for decades was stopped by an executive order.

Human wastewater contamination is so bad in Alabama homes that 1 in 3 adults in one county had hookworm. Biden funded efforts to improve sanitation there. But the effort is cancelled as "DEI".

www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/...

Contaminated drinking water facilitates Escherichia coli strain-sharing within households in urban informal settlements - Nature Microbiology Escherichia coli-contaminated stored drinking water facilitates strain-sharing between household members, suggesting water treatment can curb bacterial transmission and antibiotic resistance in urban ...

How are pathogenic and antibiotic resistant bacterial strains shared across humans, animals, and the environment? Using PIC-Seq + StrainGE, we find drinking water plays an important role in human-human strain sharing. Just published in @natmicrobiol.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

And we are building a roster of expert consultants for our growing list of projects! Read more and apply here: drive.google.com/file/d/1DNEZ...

The time burden of future climate change in SSA will disproportionately fall on women

Temperature and precipitation affect the water fetching time burden in Sub-Saharan Africa - Nature Communications This study reveals that rising temperatures and decreased precipitation levels increase walking time for fetching drinking water in Sub-Saharan Africa. Rural areas are most affected, but community ele...

Climate change is expected to make sub-Saharan Africa warmer and drier.

In @natcomms.nature.com, @seqh2o.bsky.social & co. explore how this affects the burden of collecting water—with impacts for health, hygiene, income, and gender equity:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New blog post going into @seqh2o.bsky.social and team’s inventions — which add the right amount of chlorine to disinfect water at places people collect it — and why we decided to support the work in 2020: www.openphilanthropy.org/research/how...

Thanks to support from Open Phil, we are getting ready to launch sales of the TuriTap in Kenya in a couple of weeks! www.openphilanthropy.org/research/how...

Wastewater surveillance reveals patterns of antibiotic resistance across the United States Antibiotic resistance is a growing public health threat, with over 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections and 35,000 attributable deaths annually in the U.S. This is an underestimate, as it is ba...

An important preprint contribution which demonstrates the excellent scalability and rapidity of deriving trends in antimicrobial resistance using wastewater surveillance.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Temperature and precipitation affect the water fetching time burden in Sub-Saharan Africa Nature Communications - This study reveals that rising temperatures and decreased precipitation levels increase walking time for fetching drinking water in Sub-Saharan Africa. Rural areas are most...

How will climate change affect water access in Sub-Saharan Africa? Excited to share our new paper in @naturecomms.bsky.social revealing increased temp and lower precipitation will worsen the water fetching time burden on households - read more here rdcu.be/ehreS