- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's well deserved!
Scott, a UC Davis distinguished professor who officially retired in 2015, is internationally known for his work on the ecology and epidemiology of dengue, a mosquito-borne viral infection transmitted mainly by Aedes aegypti. He now resides in Luck, Wis., where his wife's family is from.
Only 1 percent of researchers make the global list of Highly Recited Researchers, as announced by Clarivate. The Web of Science Group, the information and technology provider for the global scientific research community, annually honors the 1 percent of scientists whose publications are the most cited in scientific papers.
"Of the world's scientists and social scientists, Highly Cited Researchers truly are one in 1,000," according to the Web of Science website.
Scott is one of 14 researchers from UC Davis--and one of some 6660 worldwide--to achieve the 2021 honor.
Scott's 19 publications listed in the report have been cited a total of 402 times. His most cited publication: “The Current and Future Global Distribution and Population at Risk of Dengue,” published in Nature Microbiology in 2019.
“Being a Highly Cited Researcher means a lot to me because it's an objective measure of the extent to which the scientific community finds helpful the work that my colleagues and I did,” said Scott, who joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology) in 1996. “ I was privileged to work with exceptionally smart, hard-working, and insightful people. We had a lot of fun, but we also took our science seriously. We challenged each other in constructive and collegial ways. We are proud of the results of our efforts.”
Healthy Cites, Healthy People. Scott co-chairs a Lancet Commission that focuses on how prevention of viruses transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes fits into the growing Healthy Cities, Healthy People movement. Lancet Commissions are tasked with identifying the most pressing issues in science, medicine, and global health, with the aim of providing recommendations that change health policy or improve practice. “In this case, we are making the case for Cities without Aedes,” Scott said. "We aim to reduce the burden and threat from Aedes transmitted viruses through improved construction and management of modern urban environments that build Aedes mosquitoes out of cities and towns.”
Scott is a collaborator in a clinical trial designed to demonstrate and quantify the protective efficacy of a spatial repellent to reduce human mosquito transmitted virus infection in Sri Lanka. “This new project,” he said, “builds on a randomized controlled clinical trial that my colleagues I recently completed in Iquitos, Peru, which revealed a significant protective efficacy of a spatial repellent against human infection. Publication of those results a currently under review.”
“In addition to the clinical trial, my colleagues and I are publishing a series of papers from Iquitos that examine the role of people with in-apparent and mild infections in virus transmission. By accounting for factors underlying variation in each person's contribution to transmission we will be able to better determine the type and extent of effort needed to prevent disease.”
Scott's other activities include being a scientific advisor for a clinical trial in Brazil that is testing the public health benefit of Wolbachia for prevention of viruses transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes. “The study will assess the efficacy of releasing Wolbachia-infected Aedes aegypti into the environment in reducing human virus infection compared to standard vector control measures alone,” he said.
Scott serves on three World Health Organization committees, “which I find particularly rewarding because of their potential to improve public health policy and thus global health.”
Among his other activities:
- Chair of a group that is writing a chapter on Dengue Vector Control Guidelines that will be included in the updated version of WHO guidelines for dengue diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and control.
- Co-chair of the Wolbachia Evidence Review Group. “Mosquitoes infected with the endosymbionic bacteria Wolbachia are designed to have reduced capacity to become infected with and transmit a variety of viruses, which is expected to reduce human disease,” Scott explains. “Results from our deliberations will help the World Health Organization to develop guidelines for member States on the application of this exciting new intervention strategy.”
- Member of the World Health Organization Technical Advisory Group on the Global Integrated Arboviruses Initiative. The Arbovirus Initiative focuses on strengthening the coordination, communication, capacity building,research, preparedness, and response needed to mitigate the growing risk of epidemics due to arthropod transmitted viral diseases. Scott describes it as “a collaborative effort between the World Health Emergency Program, the Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases, and the Immunization, Vaccines, and Biological Department at WHO. Members of the Technical Advisory Group have a broad range of expertise (clinical management, diagnostics, epidemiology, vector control, virology, vaccines, and travel medicine) and serve in an advisory capacity to WHO with a focus on essential and strategic guidance on management of disease. Our current focus is finalizing the Global Integrated Arboviruses Initiative, which will be presented to the World Health Assembly for review and approval.”
Challenging and Rewarding. “I am excited about and enjoy all these activities,” the medical entomologist commented. “They are challenging and rewarding extensions of the work I have done for that past 40 years.”
Scott, who holds bachelor and master's degrees from Bowling Green (Ohio) State University, received his doctorate in ecology in 1981 from Pennsylvania State University and did postdoctoral research in epidemiology at Yale University School of Medicine's Arbovirus Research Unit, part of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. He served on the faculty of the Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, from 1983 to 1996 before joining the UC Davis entomology faculty as a professor of entomology and director of the Vector-Borne Disease Laboratory. He was acting director of the UC Davis Center for Vector-Borne Research from 1996 to 1999, and director of the UC Davis Arbovirus Research Unit (2001-2003). He was selected vice chair of the Department of Entomology in 2006, serving until 2008.
Highly honored by his peers, Scott won the coveted Harry Hoogstraal Medal from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 2018. His other honors include fellow of three organizations: American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (2014), Entomological Society of America (2010), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2008). He was named a UC Davis distinguished professor in 2014. In 2015, he won the Charles W. Woodworth Award, the highest honor awarded by the Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America.
The methodology that determines the “who's who” of influential researchers draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts and data scientists at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. It also uses the tallies to identify the countries and research institutions where these citation elite are based.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
When you say "Thank you for your service," that not only means his service in the Korean War, but his entire career in medical entomology.
Dr. Washino, an emeritus professor/chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology (now the Department of Entomology and Nematology), is internationally known for his expertise in medical entomology and ecology, more specifically the ecology of mosquitoes and mosquito control agents; rice field ecology; mosquito blood meal identification, and remote sensing and geographic information technologies. He co-authored the last complete treatise on the Mosquitoes of California.
He is legendary for not only his research, but for his academic, administrative, and public service accomplishments.
However, few people know that during the Korean War, the Sacramento native served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps from 1956 to 1958. He saw duty in Europe (Orléans, France). As a medical entomologist, Lt. Washino conducted a small detachment and a laboratory and later served as an assistant preventative medicine officer.
And even fewer people are aware that as a child, he was incarcerated with his family in American-Japanese internment camps from 1942 to 1945. It was a sad time in American history. On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, sending nearly 120,000 American citizens and legal residents of Japanese descent to internment camps. Young Bob was 10 years old and living in Sacramento with his parents and four older sisters when the mandate took effect. The family eventually returned to Sacramento.
Young Bob went on to graduate from a Sacramento high school, receive his bachelor's degree in public health (1954) from UC Berkeley; and two entomology degrees from UC Davis: a master's degree (1956) and a doctorate (1967). He joined the entomology faculty in 1964. He officially retired in 1993, but continued his academic, research and public service accomplishments into his early 80s. He still consults with the medical entomologist community, including prospective students.
As an emeritus professor, Dr. Washino was called back into service. He accepted a total of three administrative posts on the UC Davis campus: special assistant to the dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; interim co-director of the Center for Vectorborne Diseases, School of Veterinary Medicine; and chair of the entomology department.
Dr. Washino served 38 consecutive years on the Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito and Vector Control (SYMVC) Board, the longest in the agency's history.This included five terms as president. He was instrumental in spearheading plans for the design and development of the present 40-acre district complex, completed in 1994. The building that houses the laboratory, laboratory staff and the library is named in his honor. In fact, he not only designed the complex, but gifted his literature and photographic collection for research and teaching purposes.
Among his dozens of credentials:
- Past president of the American Mosquito Control Association and the California Mosquito and Vector Control Association
- Former director of the UC Agricultural and Natural Resources Statewide Center for Pest Management and a consultant with the USDA Cooperative State Research Service.
- Coordinator of an international symposium on “Culex pipiens Complex Symposium: Global Perspectives in the 21st Century” in Anaheim, Orange County, Calif., gathering together 17 U.S. and worldwide speakers, including experts from London, Japan, Australia, Portugal and Germany. This was part of the four-day American Mosquito Control Association conference. He published the results of this landmark symposium on Dec. 2, 2012 in the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association; see https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-the-american-mosquito-control-association/volume-28/issue-4s. The publication serves as a general landmark of how mosquito biologists currently view the Cx. pipiens complex. At the time, understanding the systematics of the Culex pipiens complex was one of the most controversial topics in the mosquito world.
- Chairman of the UC Davis Contained Research Facility Committee, resulting in the establishment of containment facilities on the UC Davis and UC Riverside campuses to solve the critical demand for strengthened pest exclusion, early detection, and alternative strategies for managing pest and disease problems. During the process, he worked with entomology, plant pathology and nematology faculty and with infrastructure officials on the two campuses.
Highly honored by his peers, Professor Washino received the international Harry Hoogstraal Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Entomology in 2005 and was selected a fellow of the Entomological Society of America in 1997. Among his many other awards: the 2001 Award of Distinction from the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the 1996 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society of Vector Ecology. At the 2001 Award of Distinction celebration on Oct. 19, 2001, Andrew Spielman, professor of tropical public health, Harvard School of Public Health, praised him this way: “I regard Bob as the most respected and best loved medical entomologist in the whole world."
Robert Washino is also a veteran.
A veteran of the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps.
And today is Veterans' Day.
It's time, past time, to say "Thank you, Dr. Washino, for your service."
/span>- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The tsetse fly (Glossina genus), found in sub-Saharan Africa, transmits Trypanosomiasis, a parasitic disease that we commonly refer to as "sleeping sickness."
Sleeping sickness occurs in 36 sub-Saharan Africa countries, but due to sustained control efforts, the number of new cases is decreasing, according to the World Health Organization (WHO): "In 2009 the number reported dropped below 10,000 for the first time in 50 years, and in 2015 there were 2804 cases recorded."
Enter Alvaro Acosta-Serrano of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, England, who researches tsetse flies.
Acosta-Serrano speaks on "A Hunger Game: Exploiting Tyrosine Degradation for Tsetse Control" at the next UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology seminar, set for 4:10 p.m., Wednesday, March 14 in 122 Briggs.
His research focuses on fundamental aspects of the biology of kinetoplastid parasites and their vectors, and on developing molecular tools to control and prevent parasite transmission in disease-endemic areas.
In his abstract, Acosta-Serrano writes: "My lab uses a combination of biochemistry, molecular genetics and cell biology to study the interactions between African trypanosomes and tsetse flies. These parasites undergo a complex life cycle in the tsetse that involves migration and colonization of different fly tissues. Establishment of a trypanosome infection occurs after the parasites reach the ectoperitrophic space (ES), which is in direct contact with the gut epithelium and is separated from the lumen by the peritrophic matric (PM). The tsetse PM works a barrier for oral pathogens and harmful molecules present in the blood meal. Although unproven, the most accepted hypothesis of how T. brucei reaches the ES is by direct crossing of the tsetse PM."
"My lab studies the reproductive biology and genetics of tsetse flies and other disease vectoring insects," Attardo related. "Tsetse flies are very unique in that they lactate and give birth to live young. We are exploring the fascinating physiological processes underlying the strange reproductive biology of this important vector insect. This work covers multiple areas of reproduction in tsetse including nutrition; analysis of genes associated with milk production; the molecular and biochemical interactions between male and female flies and the role symbiotic bacteria play in tsetse reproduction. We hope to eventually use what we learn to enhance current tsetse control efforts by exploiting their reproductive biology."
Attardo, who joined the faculty last year, holds a doctorate in genetics from Michigan State University and worked for 13 years at the Yale School of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial diseases, first as a postdoctoral associate and then as a research scientist. (See feature story)
The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology hosts weekly research seminars at 4:10 p.m. on Wednesdays in 122 Briggs Hall, off Kleiber Hall Drive. The seminar on tsetse flies is the last of the winter quarter series. Coordinators are assistant professor Rachel Vannette; Extension apiculturist Elina Lastro Niño and Ph.D student Brendon Boudinot.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
What's medical entomolology?
Anyone who's an entomologist or who works in entomology is asked that question periodically. Medical, they know. Entomology? Often not. But medical entomology?
Well, it's the study of relationships among arthorpods, microbial pathogens and human health, according to medical entomologist Thomas Scott, professor of entomology at UC Davis.
Scott teaches courses on medical entomology. His next one: the 2009 winter quarter, Jan. 5 through March 16.
Worldwide, Scott says, arthropod-borne diseases have devastating effects on human health; they are a leading cause of human morbidity and mortality.
In his course, he explains the basic biology of medically important arthropods and the pathogens they transmit. The diseases include malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, West Nile virus, Lyme disease and River Blindness.
Scott, a noted mosquito-borne disease expert and newly elected fellow of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (for "distinguished contributions to the biology and ecology of mosquitoes and his leadership in developing strategic concepts for preventing dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases”) does research from his mosquito research laboratory at UC Davis and at field stations in Peru, Thailand and Mexico.
In January, Scott hosted the 42nd annual U.S.-Japan Parasitic Disease Conference on the UC Davis campus. Some 100 scientists from throughout the world participated in the three-day conference "to develop a cross-cutting perspective on what the priorities should be for the future research on arthropod vectors of disease," he explained.
With new and emerging diseases, increasing national and international travel, settlement in endemic areas, and the proliferation of commerce, we can expect disease from vector-borne pathogens to increase, Scott says.
It's obvious what we need less of (diseases) and what we need more of (medical entomologists).