Field work 101...a crash course for my summer students [Aetiology]

As I've mentioned, this has been a busy year. In the span of 3 months, 3 small grants were funded; enough to keep me busy for the next year. Though my training prior to arriving here was almost exclusively in bench microbiology (mostly molecular microbiology/molecular epidemiology), I knew when I took my current job that I wanted to expand that and go beyond just examining whatever samples someone else had on hand, and set up my own studies. Being Iowa, a big focus of our work is rural health and agriculture, so this has taken me out to cattle and pig farms--previously with a technician who worked for me, and a large animal veterinarian who we work with. This summer so far it's been just me, my grad student, and our summer interns (including some who'd never been on a farm before)--pictures included after the jump. For our... [read full story]