Come meet our newest faculty members
The Faculty of Science is proud to announce a new, complimentary online lecture series that highlights the incredible new talent in our midst. Over the coming months, we will be hosting a series of talks from a wide range of topics that introduce you to our latest lecturers, researchers and future stars of the Faculty.
Stay tuned as we release the names of future series speakers in the weeks ahead! These talks are open to alumni, friends, faculty, staff and the greater UW community.
Jozef Nissimov, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology
The Good, the Bad and the Weird: Talkin' about Viruses
The COVID-19 pandemic has made viruses the stars of an unwanted Hollywood production and the most “popular” microorganisms of 2020. More people than ever before know what a virus is and are aware of the dangers that these invisible microbial entities that consist of predominantly sugars and proteins, pose to human health and our globalised way of life.
What many do not know, is that viruses can be much more than “bad news in a bag of protein”. During this talk, Dr. Nissimov will try to shine a positive light on viruses, by illustrating their fundamental role in the evolution of life, their interplay with climate processes, and their potential use in combating diseases and ecological nuisances, such as bacterial pathogens and harmful algal blooms.
Dr. Nissimov is an environmental microbiologist and an aquatic virus ecologist. His focal points of interest are elucidating the interplay of hosts and their viruses in the context of aquatic biogeochemistry and energy flow, discovering aspects of algal-virus co-evolutionary processes and mechanisms of host resistance, and revealing the effects of environmental change on the fate of ecologically important viruses. He has a keen interest in also developing new host-virus model systems, and investigating the applied potential of viruses.
A link to this zoom webinar will be sent upon registration. Per webinar format, only UW hosts and lecturer will on video and audio.