News

Bard College announces the appointment of Juliet Morrison ’03 to the College’s board of trustees. Morrison is an assistant professor in the microbiology and plant pathology department at University of California Riverside, where she specializes in combining computational analysis with immunological and virological methods to address questions at the host-pathogen interface. She has spent the last 17 years studying innate immune responses to viral pathogens such as dengue virus, rhinovirus, poliovirus, yellow fever virus, and influenza virus.

“I am thrilled to welcome Juliet, a distinguished scientist and young alumna, to the Bard Board,” said Bard President Leon Botstein.

About Juliet Morrison
During her graduate studies at Columbia University, Morrison discovered that a viral protease facilitated poliovirus and rhinovirus interferon resistance. In her postdoctoral training at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, she discovered and characterized two novel and disparate mechanisms whereby the NS5 proteins of dengue virus and yellow fever virus inhibit interferon signaling to enhance viral replication and pathogenesis. At the University of Washington, Morrison showed that influenza disease severity correlates with host transcriptional signatures of increased cytokine production, and decreased coagulation and lipid metabolism signaling.

Morrison has received several awards for her work in the field of science and medical research, including the John and Samuel Bard Award in Science and Medicine from Bard College in 2020, the Calderone Junior Faculty Award in 2017 from Columbia University, and the Women in STEM Award from Bronx Community College in 2017.

Her Bard Senior Project, “Characterization of the Product of a Putative Mitochondrial Isocitrate Dehydrogenase Gene (ICD1) from Tetrahymena pyriformis,” was a study in which a clone of ICD1 was mutagenized to be made readable in E. coli and, after expression, shown to have isocitrate dehydrogenase activity. Her Senior Project advisor was Professor John Ferguson. Juliet received Ph.D. in microbiology from Columbia University in 2009. Juliet lives in Riverside, California.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(2/24/21)
 

Does the conversion of natural habitats to human use favor animals that harbor agents causing human disease? A global analysis of vertebrates provides an answer to this pressing question. In their commentary accompanying the report, disease ecologists Felicia Keesing of Bard College and Richard Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies note that the study shows “the greatest zoonotic threats arise where natural areas have been converted to croplands, pastures and urban areas.” Ostfeld and Keesing have seen evidence of that firsthand during two decades studying Lyme disease transmission in New York’s Hudson Valley. Where development has cut the valley’s forests into small fragments, Professor Keesing says, “populations of white-footed mice boom because their predators and competitors have disappeared.” She and Ostfeld have found that white-footed mice “not only host more of the ticks that transmit Lyme, but they also are more likely than other mammals to infect ticks with the bacterium that causes the disease. The ticks, in turn, pass it to people.”

Felicia Keesing is the David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing at Bard College.