Kirsten Nielsen brings microbiology research laboratory to Center for One Health Research

Kirsten Nielsen arrives at Virginia Tech with three ongoing National Institues of Health research grants, lifetime experience with academic-related relocation, and three generations of research excellence in her bloodlines.

Nielsen, a new professor of microbiology and immunology at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, is in the process of assembling a laboratory in the Center for One Health Research. Her principal area of research, the invasive fungus Cryptococcus neoformans, very much fits into the veterinary college’s One Health focus that links human, animal, and environmental health.

“Cryptococcus is both an animal and human disease,” Nielsen said. “We see it in cats. We see it in dogs. And birds as well, like pet parakeets and parrots. And cryptococcus also causes deadly disease in humans, usually people with underlying health problems that affect their immune function.”

Nielsen brings $8 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants to Virginia Tech, two for the study of Cryptococcus neoformans and another emphasizing research infrastructure development in low- and middle-income countries with a focus on Uganda. In addition, Nielsen is a fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology and an editor for MBio, one of the premier microbiology research journals. 

Often benign, sometimes deadly

Cryptococcus kills more than 500,000 people annually and is considered the second leading cause of death in people living with HIV. Cryptococcus neoformans was recently listed first on the World Health Organization critical fungal pathogens list.

“One thing that I find fascinating about cryptococcus is that the vast majority of us actually have a cryptococcus infection in our lungs,” Nielsen said. “A cryptococcal granuloma in our lungs we acquired very early in life, usually about the age of 5. In most people, our immune system will control that infection our entire lives.   
   
“But if you look at how frequently we see deadly disease in humans,” Nielsen said, “it’s very low and most frequently in severely immune-compromised individuals. So why aren't we clearing the infection? Is it an arms race between the pathogen and the host, and it's a stalemate? Or is it that our immune system is keeping cryptococcus there for some reason?”

The presence of cryptococcus in our lungs acts as a time bomb, quickly becoming a deadly pathogen once the host’s immune system is compromised, as occurs with HIV, cancer chemotherapy, or organ transplant.

Balancing careers

Nielsen’s husband, Joe Knight, arrived at Virginia Tech in January as the new head of the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment. The couple have become proficient at balancing academic careers along with raising a daughter, who is now a junior at the University of Oregon. 

The couple, each with bachelor’s degrees from Purdue University, met on study abroad in Ukraine. They lived in North Carolina for several years, where each earned doctorates at North Carolina State University in 2002. For five years afterward, Nielsen did postdoctoral work at Duke University while Knight worked at the Environmental Protection Agency campus in nearby Research Triangle Park.

Prior to coming to Virginia Tech, Nielsen and Knight served in academic posts at the University of Minnesota since 2007 — Nielsen in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the medical school, and Knight in the Department of Forest Resources in the College of Forestry, Agriculture, and Natural Sciences.

“We are proud of the fact that we have been able to manage our careers so that both of us are highly successful and neither one of us took the back seat,” Nielsen said.

Nielsen enjoys scuba diving and snorkeling, but also hiking and canoeing, activities that are more readily found in the Blacksburg area. Along with their college-aged daughter, she and Knight have three dogs, all rescued – a chocolate Labraodor retriever, a boxer-Rottweiler mix, and a black mouth cur. 

To assist in the process of recruiting Nielsen and relocating her laboratory, the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation awarded Virginia Tech a Commonwealth Commercialization Fund (CCF) grant. The CCF eminent researcher recruitment and retention program supports Virginia's public research colleges and universities attract and retain exceptional faculty talent with a focus on technology research, development, and commercialization.

“The veterinary college has stepped up and created a position for me that is exceptional and that I could not turn down,” Nielsen said.

Generations of researchers 

Nielsen’s family is steeped in research success. Nielsen is a third-generation scientist, with previous and current family members — including her parents, brother, and cousins — working in many aspects of the biological and physical sciences. 

“Thanksgiving dinner is pretty interesting, usually it’s at least one of us talking about our latest exciting discovery,” Nielsen said. “The dinner table talk when I was growing up made us question whether our scientific tendences were based on nature or nurture.“

Nielsen was born in Denmark when her father was a Marshall Fellow at the Genetics Institute, University of Copenhagen. Following her family’s path in academia, she later lived in California and then in West Lafayette, Indiana, home of Purdue University, where both of her parents were on faculty and she ultimately completed her undergraduate degree in biochemistry. 

Commitment to One Health

Nielsen completed her doctorate in botany and plant pathology at North Carolina State University in 2002 then became a postdoctoral fellow in molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke University through 2007. 

Nielsen’s laboratory at the Center for One Health Research will ultimately be staffed by a dozen or more people, a combination of those she is bringing from Minnesota and those hired anew.

She said her educational and professional path has already taken her into three collegiate settings, again mirroring the One Health model of focus on interlinking human, animal, and environmental health.

“I've spent the last 20 plus years working in a medical school environment,” Nielsen said. “But I did undergraduate work in a veterinary school and I did my graduate work at an agricultural school. So making this transition is probably not going to be difficult for me.”