Video of February's speaker is up! 

The topic for Daniell Rowles' presentation this month comes from her interest in viruses from her grad school days. It's that time of year again where we are all coughing and sniffling or worried we are going to catch it from someone else. While infectious disease can also come from bacteria and other microbes, viruses seem to be the most frustrating since there aren’t many magic pills we can take to cure them once they take hold. This talk will explore three common seasonal afflictions: common colds, influenza, and norovirus (aka stomach bugs). What are these things? What’s going on with our immune systems? How can we get better? And how do we even know any of this is true?

Daniell Rowles self describes as being born a scientist and a lifelong learner. Throughout her education and career she has explored many subfields of biology and strives to share it with her community. Daniell attended Lehigh University for a B.S. in Molecular Biology and graduated with Highest Honors in 2008. Her undergraduate research focused on the industrial side of biology, studying the development of algae to aid in the production of non-petroleum based plastics. She also earned a minor in Environmental Science and spent time doing field research in the Rocky Mountains. While at Lehigh she also worked as a research intern at the University of Pennsylvania and as a volunteer teaching science lessons in local middle school classrooms. At Penn she got a taste for the medical side of biology doing her project on cancer drug development.

While in graduate school at Princeton University, Daniell earned a PhD studying virology and focused her research on the infection cycle of human Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV1). This research lead to several publications in 2013 and 2015. She also taught courses on Immunology and Molecular Biology for non-science majors as well as mentoring students in independent laboratory research.

Daniell is currently a Research Scientist at GlaxoSmithKline in Conshohocken, PA working to develop large molecule drug manufacturing.