Scientist by day. Lover of mosquitoes and tacos. Caffeine and history buff. Unlikely midwesterner. Thoughts are my own.
Joined August 2015
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- Following 887
- Followers 2,289
- Likes 7,153
340 Photos and videos
Our latest work tracks the continued spread of Aedes albopictus 🦟in Iowa, now detected in at least 10 counties. Representing its northern range in the Midwest, this has broader implications for its continued spread in the US. academic.oup.com/jme/article…
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Join us! We're hiring a Research Scientist to support projects on mosquito immunity and mosquito‑borne disease transmission. Ideal for a post‑bac or recent M.S. looking to gain experience in cutting-edge research in vector biology.
isu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Io…
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👀There will be a Keystone Symposium with a focus on Vector-Pathogen Interactions to be held in Geneva, Switzerland in February 2027. It should be a great meeting and hope to see you there! keystonesymposia.org/confere…
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As a heads up, it is now required that your NIH biosketch be created using Sciencv. This can be tricky since ORCID must be linked to your MyNCBI account, and for many, including myself, multiple accounts may have to be merged by NIH support staff. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/…
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Make sure you keep this in mind and start early if you are going to be submitting to the February NIH deadlines!
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Our latest work developing genetic markers for mosquito hemocytes and their characterization using spectral imaging flow cytometry. The result is an advanced characterization of mosquito immune cells and the foundation for building genetic tools. nature.com/articles/s41...
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I'd like to thank the colossal efforts of
@samantsidis and Hyeogsun Kwon, as well as the help from the UMITF in providing transgenic An. gambiae.
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Pleased to share our recent work in collaboration with the @PerrimonLab in which we perform the first genome-wide CRISPR knockout screen in Anopheles to examine essential fitness genes and genes associated with clodronate liposome function
rdcu.be/eRxmT
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I'd also like to acknowledge the huge contributions from @EnzoMameli and @samantsidis in this monumental and collaborative study
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Ryan Smith retweeted
30 Oct 2025
🦟 We've just published the world's first head-to-toe single-cell atlas of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in @CellCellPress! The #MosquitoCellAtlas maps 69 cell types across 19 tissues, revealing surprising biology: mosquitoes taste with their legs (more than we thought), glial cells (not neurons!) dramatically rewire after blood meal & males/females are nearly identical at the cellular level—with intriguing exceptions. Read it here: cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092…
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Ryan Smith retweeted
13 Aug 2025
Drs David Hall & @Vectorimmunlab highlight @merkling_lab & colleagues’ @CellGenomics article on #mosquito cellular responses in #midgut & #fatbody after #bloodfeeding. #Aedes #aegypti #scRNAseq #Metabolomics @IowaStateU @institutpasteur @univ_paris_cite
authors.elsevier.com/a/1lbEr…
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5 Jul 2025
Celebrating the holiday weekend with another bang! Our work describing roles of TNF signaling on mosquito immune cell function and in limiting malaria parasite infection is now published. Big shout out to @samantsidis and others for their contributions! journals.plos.org/plospathog…
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Excited to share our latest collaborative work with looking at the role of mosquito immune cells in virus infection. It turns out that these cells actually help disseminate an infection, increasing the potential for virus transmission rdcu.be/euiZt
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Ryan Smith retweeted
5 Mar 2025
I am thrilled to present the Mosquito Cell Atlas! We analyzed 367K nuclei from 19 tissues in male & female mosquitoes, creating a comprehensive resource for vector biology & infectious disease research.
Plus we made some surprising discoveries! 🦟🧵
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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ALT Photos of Aedes aegypti female (left) and male (right). Numbers indicate location of collected tissues (listed in legend boxes). Photos by Alex Wild.
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Ryan Smith retweeted
5 Mar 2025
BIG NEWS! The Mosquito Cell Atlas preprint is live! 🦟🧬 My first senior author paper! Massive and accessible snRNA-seq dataset and a lot of cool mosquito biology. A true collaborative achievement! #MCA
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
See @oliwiagoldman thread ⬇️
5 Mar 2025
I am thrilled to present the Mosquito Cell Atlas! We analyzed 367K nuclei from 19 tissues in male & female mosquitoes, creating a comprehensive resource for vector biology & infectious disease research.
Plus we made some surprising discoveries! 🦟🧵
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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ALT Photos of Aedes aegypti female (left) and male (right). Numbers indicate location of collected tissues (listed in legend boxes). Photos by Alex Wild.
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Ryan Smith retweeted
13 Feb 2025
I am super excited to share our latest review about the effects of blood-feeding and infection on arthropod (mosquitoes and ticks) hemocytes.
Huge thanks to @theticklab and my mentor, @Vectorimmunlab, for their efforts in putting this together..
sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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🚨Interested in mosquito immunity and genetics? 🚨
We are recruiting for two post-doc positions:
1) Development of genetic tools to study mosquito immune cells isu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Io…
2) Role of mosquito immune cells in immune recognition and priming isu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Io…
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Excited to share that I officially received my first R01 today! It's been a long road, one marked by persistence and several grants that narrowly missed the payline. Now to do all of the exciting work that we proposed!
I will be hiring, so be on the lookout for job postings!
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For the sake of transparency, this particular grant took four submissions and about 3 years to get it across the finish line:
-Submission #1: 50th %
-Submission #2: 26th %
-Submission #3: 29th %
-Submission #4: 12th %
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Ryan Smith retweeted
15 Nov 2024
🎉Congratulations Dr. Ryan Smith @Vectorimmunlab, Iowa State U, for receiving the 2024 ACME Breakthrough in Medical Entomology Award.
🥇The award was presented by outgoing Chair @DrAdrianaTroyo at the awards ceremony during ACME Symposium II @ASTMH #TropMed24, with @hamer_lab
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