News

The first half of 2026 was busy in the Hanley Virus Lab!

Kathy was awarded the Conference USA “Professor of the Year Award”. Does she have to throw any kind of ball during the award ceremony and thereby shame the lab…stay tuned!

Lawrence Zhou graduated with his PhD and moved on to a post-doctoral fellowship at USDA in Manhattan Kansas. Lucky for us, he will continue to work in the VSV Grand Challenge project!

Undergrad researcher Eva Rangel traveled to Costa Rica to assist in the VSV study there.

Juan Carlos Cambronero Heinrichs was selected by the Costa Rica Academy of Sciences as its Outstanding Talent of the Month. We are now calling him the Talented Dr. Cambronero.

Kathy and Immo Hansen received funding to launch several surveillance projects in NM, including surveillance for brown dog ticks and Rickettsial bacterial as well as Culex mosquitoes and the viruses they carry, like West Nile virus. These projects involve a cast of thousands, including grad students Zachary DeKay, and Matt Heilbronn, Gabriel Borg and undergrad researchers Christine Yoo, Phoebe Davis, Diego Iglesias and Andrea Hernandez.

Kathy and Immo also initiated collection of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes across New Mexico, which effort is led by grad student Zachary Wooton and undergrads (but very soon to be grad students!) Eva Rangel and Alexis Olmos.

The whole Hanley lab gang took a trip to Carlsbad Caverns, combining work (mosquito and tick collection) and play!

Kathy and PhD students Carleen Silva and Lindsey Biehler presented their research at the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases meeting in Blacksburg, VA.

Former Hanley lab post-bac Jordan Gass drove down from UNM, where she is a PhD student, to give a lecture in Kathy’s Virology class. What a thrill to see such an accomplished alumna!

Another alumna, Paige Harman, flew in from her position as a researcher at USDA to give critical training in support of our tick study.

A long awaited paper, reporting data collected from monkeys fifteen years ago in Senegal, has finally come out!

Seroprevalence of dengue virus antibodies among multiple species of non-human primates in Senegal suggests that sylvatic dengue virus is maintained in non-primate reservoirs in this region. Cinkovich SC, Althouse BM, Hitchings MDT, Bonnaire-Fils P, Diop OM, Faye O, Faye EHA, Diallo D, Sadio BD, Sow A, Faye O, Diallo M, Benefit B, Watts DM, Sall AA, Weaver SC, Hanley KA, Cummings DAT.PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2026 Jan 27;20(1):e0013946. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0013946.