As we begin the 2022 fiscal year and prepare to enter calendar year 2022, we on the editorial team want to take a moment to introduce ourselves to you. First up are our contributing writers, staff in program areas around our institutions who pitch ideas and cover topics related to those groups. Read on to meet them.

With all the talk around COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, it's easy to forget there's another infectious respiratory disease already looming: influenza. Flu season is going to look a little different this year, according to Sarah Hooper, nurse practitioner (CRNP), RN, manager of the Frederick National Laboratory Occupational Health Services.

A grim statistic is driving Steven Rosenberg’s mission to find new cancer treatments—and his partnership with Frederick National Laboratory to do so. “Every year in the United States, about 600,000 people die of cancer, 90% of whom die of the solid epithelial cancers,” said Rosenberg, the M.D., Ph.D., chief of the National Cancer Institute’s Surgery Branch, head of the Tumor Immunology Section at NCI’s Center for Cancer Research.

NCI at Frederick’s latest class of student interns continues to telework under pandemic protocols. While that means not working in laboratories or offices as they would in a normal year, it doesn’t mean a lack of opportunities to make a difference in science. In fact, according to Kedar Narayan, Ph.D., volume electron microscopy group leader at the Center for Molecular Microscopy, one opportunity is quite unique.

The Biological Response Modifiers Program (BRMP) in Frederick had visitors. A group of well-regarded scientific experts arrived in 1991 to tour some of its laboratories and spaces. Learning about the program was only part of their goal, however. They were there to evaluate it.