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Picture a game of chess between the immune system and HIV. For every move the immune system makes against the virus, its opponent adapts, changing the game and shifting the advantage. But what if you could turn the clock back and watch the first few moves of the game? What could you learn about the virus from its opening moves?

Researchers from the Ó³»­´«Ã½ and the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, and Harvard set out to take a careful look at a viral population during the critical time period just after infection.

It’s been a long time since Chad Nusbaum has seen a conference room go so quiet so fast.

A speaker from Oxford Nanopore Technologies had just described the company’s new disposable device, which will sell for less than $900. The size of a USB memory stick, it reads individual chemical bases on a strand of DNA as it passes through a tiny hole, measuring differences in electrical conductivity to reveal their identity. A larger version of the device will stack in arrays that are projected to be able to sequence a human genome in 15 minutes.

When you speak with Kimberly Stegmaier about her work as a pediatric oncologist at Children’s Hospital Boston, it is clear that she loves treating patients, particularly children with hematological cancers like leukemia. Kim devotes her time to caring for children through the in-patient oncology service yet she also maintains long-term clinical relationships with patients she has been treating since completing her pediatric hematology oncology residency.