Thirty-five years ago this month, in September 1982, I arrived at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons to open my virology laboratory. I brought with me an infectious DNA copy of the poliovirus RNA genome, the first of its kind, and a lot of enthusiasm. Over the years we used this infectious DNA to study poliovirus neurovirulence, pathogenesis, and translation, among other topics; I wrote grant applications, published papers, and trained new scientists. In short, I was a typical academic scientist.
My career forked in 2000 with the publication by the American Society for Microbiology of the textbook Principles of Virology. Because this book was written by process, not by virus, each of the authors learned far more virology than ever before. As a consequence of writing this book, I became interested in disseminating virology to the public. Beginning with virology blog in 2004, I began to use social media to communicate science. This interest has lead to a collection of blogs, podcasts, lectures, and videos, in addition to four editions of Principles of Virology.
Recently virologist Islam Hussein, founder of Virolvlog and an avid science communicator, decided to summarize my modest scicomm career with an infographic. I’m grateful to Islam for this lovely chart, which was produced by Mohamed Gaawan. Here’s to the next 35 years.
