New Center Explores Microbe Resistance

PROFS

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Currently, Altier’s research lab focuses on the pathogenesis of Salmonella — that is, the way in which the bacteria makes people and animals sick.

Altier and Rhee connected over their shared passion for antimicrobial resistance.

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences also issued a statement to its students. Student services offered mental health resources such as a “grief and loss” pamphlet and a 24/7 help hotline.

“This devastating and senseless loss of life has become far too common across the country,” the email stated. “During times like this, we need to grieve, but we also must remember the values that define us and bind us together, calling upon our collegial and caring CALS community.”

Honan and Bellamy’s email referred students to community support resources, which included Counseling and Psychological Services and a Cornell Health document about Grief and Loss.

Rhee, a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, has co-authored numerous publications on tuberculosis, his research focus. Like Altier, he has an academic background in medicine, having earned his B.S. from Cornell before completing an M.D. and Ph.D. program at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine.

Rhee’s research aligns with his work at the center, as tuberculosis is the leading cause of death due to antimicrobial resistance.

“[The research done at the center] overlaps with some of the work that I’m interested in, because some of the answers and principles that drive antimicrobial resistance in tuberculosis [may] be biologically relevant to other microbes too,” Rhee said.

Although they hail from different Cornell colleges and center their research on different topics,

The two came to work together through the Office of the Provost’s Radical Collaboration Initiative, a program with faculty task forces across ten discipline areas. Rhee served on the infection biology committee, through which collaboration between faculty interested in antimicrobial resistance led to the center’s establishment.

“It was a happy accident,” Rhee said. “Over the course of that task force, the topic of antimicrobial resistance was the area of shared interests between the two of us… We were largely just spokespeople for a larger, campus-wide community of people that were interested in microbial resistance.”

Altier commented on his and Rhee’s complementary skills, given that they specialize in different research areas at different schools.

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