Greetings all,

Welcome to the official blog of the Team Aquatic Virus at Cornell University (otherwise known as the Hewson Lab). Team Aquatic Virus was founded in 2009 when Julie Brown joined Professor Ian Hewson (that’s me!) in an almost empty lab (seriously, there weren’t even chairs in the room…) to investigate the role of marine viruses in aquatic ecosystem function. Since then, the team has grown to 3 undergraduate students, 4 graduate students, a technician, several associated researchers, and our pet sunfish Ollie. While our mission remains to understand viral activities in context of ecosystem function, our work also includes study of bacterioplankton physiology through community gene transcription, sediment microbial ecology, and includes both marine and freshwater studies. Recently, we have also started to examine viruses in echinoderms and urochordates… and some day we might even work on vertebrate viruses (*gasp*… actually, come to think of it, we already do as we also examine elasmobranch viruses…). My hope is that through this blog we can communicate our findings in near real-time to the world, and provide a chance for followers to ask questions about our work.  Check out our team roster page to learn more about the folks who make up this unique group! And stay tuned for field and laboratory research updates!! – Ian, the PI.