NEW YORK — Concerns recently over the spread of bird flu into dairy cattle, and subsequently human dairy workers, has made the work of one group of New York City high school students even more important.  

The New York City Virus Hunters are getting their hands dirty to find out which little birdies might be carrying a deadly disease. Strolls through Central Park spark excitement when the group finds a fresh splatter.

High schoolers scoop poop in search of bird flu

Mount Sinai and BioBus pay high school students as Junior Scientist interns, who scoop up poop in search of sickness.

“Really the most important thing is just making sure it’s fresh, it’s not dried up,” explained Kailani Gaynor as she collected a sample.

As a haven for both local and migratory birds, Central Park is a unique study of an urban environment.

“We try not to collect it too close because we want to spread it out, make sure it’s from different birds so that we get a variety,” said Kadiatou Kante.

“We would look around to see what kind of birds are surrounding where we collected the data,” continued Sadia Choudhury.

Project supported by National Institutes of Health

The project started in 2020 with support from the National Institutes of Health and aims to better understand how bird flu can adapt and fly between species.

“It does not mean it’s dangerous for humans right now, but we want to make sure we collect as much data as possible and early enough so we can actually assess the risk,” said BioBus director of community service Dr. Christine Marizzi.

As they take their samples back across the street to Mount Sinai’s Krammer Lab, the Virus Hunters mix up a solution to start to see the differences in DNA with help from lead scientist Philip Meade, PhD, a Post-Doctoral Fellow.

“If we have something that’s real, then we’ll get the full genetic sequence, the whole genome of the virus, so we can do analysis on it,” Meade said.

Important to learn bird flu’s impact on pets

Meade said he is more worried about the spread in dairy cows than the jump to their handlers, as it is important to understand the potential for pets, especially in parks.

“Cows are more similar to humans than birds are to humans,” Meade said, “and the virus having extra time and basically reps to acquire adaptations for mammals is something that we really have to keep an eye on.”

Out of more than 1,900 samples collected over one year, from feces, plus water where winged beings gather and patients at the Wild Bird Fund, the Virus Hunters found H5N1 in six birds, including three geese and a sick chicken in Upper Manhattan, but none of the droppings proved to be positive for flu.

Their research was recently published in the American Society for Microbiology’s Journal of Virology.

The next NYC Virus Hunters group starts in the fall with six new students.

Lisette Martínez, disfrutó del desfile Loisaida: “Es un honor estar en Nueva York y representar por Puerto Rico, por los dominicanos verdad, por los cubanos, eso es lo importante, que todos podamos venir juntos y celebrar nuestra cultura aquí en el lower east side, Loisaida.”

El desfile Loisaida tiene como tema un mosaico cultural presentando además de música y danza, artesanías de grupos locales y presentaciones poéticas.

Los participantes desfilaron por la avenida C desde la calle 5ta este hasta al escenario en la calle 12 donde se presentaron diversas presentaciones artísticas.

“No es un evento comercial, es un evento realmente comunitario y uno de los mejores eventos que se da para el público latino el fin de semana de Memorial Day”, sosteien Alejandro Epifanio, director de Loisaida Center.

Este año por primera vez, el evento agregó una calle dedicada a la artesanía debido al éxito de los artistas el año pasado.

20 Artistas muestran diversos atractivos de la cultura puertorriqueña mediante joyería, pinturas y otras artesanías.

“Yo creo que es importante, especialmente los niños que nacen aquí de nosotros seguir la cultura de nosotros pa’ que sean orgullosos igual que nosotros si ustedes ven nosotros siempre estamos con esa bandera es un orgullo. Y ver ninos tambien que vienen aquí y preguntan y ese sapito que es, ese es el coqui”, asegura el artesano Héctor Cotza.

En el recorrido de la avenida C, los neoyorquinos disfrutaron de una presentación de música típica Puertorriqueña en vivo en el Jardín Pancho Ramos Community Garden.

Mientras, los niños tuvieron actividades artísticas y algunos visitaron el laboratorio de ciencias móvil biobus.

Victoria Herrera, portavoz de BioBus indica:

“Hablar sobre el cambio climático en Puerto Rico, la agricultura y cómo podemos seguir adelante para cultivar, sembrar y educarnos un poco más sobre las cosas que están pasando en la isla y cómo podemos hacer cambios aquí en Nueva York.”

Y en el escenario, varios artistas y poetas deleitaron a los presentes. 

“Tenemos un microscopio que podemos prender y podemos sacar la matitas y los nenes pueden ver lo que tienen ahí dentro”.

Victoria Herrera es científica junior en el laboratorio de investigación móvil de la organización sin fines de lucro, BioBus en el Lower East Side.

Herrera fue pasante por un año en BioBus. Ahora como científica, creó un proyecto para enseñar a la comunidad sobre el cambio climático en Puerto Rico después del huracán María.  

“La importancia de ciencia, ecología y como podemos, como latinos, crear un futuro más saludable con tierra saludable. Eso como puertorriqueño es bien importante hacerlo aquí, también es bien importante hacerlo en la isla”, dijo Herrera.

Desde el 2008, BioBus viaja a distintas escuelas para enseñar ciencias a niños y jóvenes en comunidades de escasos recursos en la ciudad.  

“Cuando agarramos tierra de sus comunidades y lo ponemos abajo del microscopio y ven que hay diferentes tipos de insectos o diferentes tipos de plantas es como que su mente se abre mucho para entender que sí somos todos parte de este ambiente y tenemos que cuidarlo”, explicó Marina Delgado, BioBus.

La científica Delgado dice que durante el año trabajan en diversos proyectos en las escuelas de Lower Eat Side, Harlem y el sur de El Bronx enseñando sobre justicia ambiental.

“Entendiendo la importancia de la composta no solo para nuestro ambiente pero también para nuestra salud, con otras escuelas primarias este año pasado hicimos un programa de hidroponía y crecimos diferentes tipos de plantas comestibles para combatir la inseguridad alimentaria”, dijo Delgado.

Agregó que los participantes latinos de habla hispana se llenan de emoción cuando les hablan en español.  

“Si no entienden el inglés todavía porque lo están aprendiendo y les hablamos en español, su mente y su mundo cambian mucho porque por primera vez ven que alguien que habla como ellos está haciendo las ciencias”.

La organización ofrece pasantías para estudiantes de la secundario cada verano y se preparan para abrir un nuevo laboratorio móvil que servirá a la comunidad de El Bronx.  

“Trabajar con más comunidades todavía porque vamos a tener más buses todavía, me parece que es lo más importante que viene ahora en este año”, agregó Delgado.

BioBus hosted an avian biology and virology Afterschool Science Hour event on Friday at the Columbia Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute in Manhattanville.

BioBus, an organization that focuses on bringing science to New York City K-12 students who are often excluded from the scientific community, partners with the Zuckerman Institute to hold monthly Afterschool Science Hours. These events provide activities to local students free of charge, in an effort to make science education more accessible.

Christine Marizzi, director of community science at BioBus, and the organizer of Friday’s event, expressed hope that events like these would bring science to children of diverse backgrounds.

“I hope that it instills the joy of science, but also models science as a place for them, and science is actually for them,” Marizzi said.

Friday’s event focused on avian biology and virology, with research and activities developed by the New York City Virus Hunters. The team is composed of high school interns working to develop educational materials for BioBus’ younger students based on their own independent research projects.

The activities included stations where students could examine bird feathers under a microscope and build virus and bird models. The event also brought live pigeons from the Wild Bird Fund, a local bird veterinarian and rehabilitation center.

Regina Corpus, a teacher at the Manhattanville After-school Center, brought 15 of her students to the event on Friday.

“We always make it our best effort to come,” Corpus said. “This time I brought even more students because they heard from other students how much they wanted to go, so they joined the bandwagon.”

Corpus said her students enjoy the unique learning experience that BioBus events provide.

“Do you ever hear such low roar in a classroom? No,” Corpus said. “They’re working. They’re learning. They’re talking. They’re asking questions. They’re sharing. That’s why we come here.”

Doris Nuñez, a local parent who found the BioBus event through social media, said the event offered exciting opportunities for her child to interact with science at a young age.

“They definitely get excited,” Nuñez said. “Just being able to use the microscope is like a big highlight for them at this age.”

Sumeyye Yar, a local parent who frequently brings her 4-year-old child to BioBus events, echoed Nuñez’s sentiment.

“I think this is such a wonderful place,” Yar said. “We love living near BioBus because we can come to all the events.”

BioBus’ next Afterschool Science Hour event will be held on Tuesday, Mar. 12 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Zuckerman Institute.

City News Staff Writer Jesus Vargas can be contacted at jesus.vargas@columbiaspectator.com. Follow him on X @JesusVargas724.

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has received more than $1.3 million from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to expand the New York City Virus Hunters program. The program engages high school students from communities historically underrepresented in science in the first large-scale citizen science effort to catalog and map circulating avian influenza and avian paramyxoviruses in New York City’s wild birds. The goal is to track emerging viruses and to prevent future outbreaks.

Wild birds can disseminate infectious virus particles that spread avian diseases, especially highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as “bird flu.” While the risk is very low, bird-to-bird and bird-to-human transmission is possible in highly populated areas like New York City, which features 50,000 acres of green spaces and an abundance of wildlife. Surveillance and virus species identification are vital to prepare for and prevent a possible future pandemic, and to identify the types of viruses that may be harmful to humans and other birds.

Established in 2020, the program is a collaboration between BioBus, a science education nonprofit known for its mobile laboratories that bring science to students; Wild Bird Fund, a wildlife rehabilitation center; and Icahn Mount Sinai. Through this program, the students learn lab and research skills, practice science communications, and take steps to become the next generation of problem-solvers.

The newly awarded Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) grant will support the Virus Hunters program, which empowers students to help prevent the next pandemic by turning them into virus detectives who conduct surveillance work. They begin their research by safely collecting bird fecal samples at urban parks and natural areas. The students then process the samples in the lab of Florian Krammer, PhD, Mount Sinai Professor in Vaccinology and a globally recognized leader in influenza research, including the development of novel vaccines and therapeutics. The lab work involves screening the collected fecal samples and analyzing the genomes of identified viruses. No live viruses will be handled; only their non-infectious genomes will be detected and analyzed. According to Dr. Krammer, birds are key to finding out which influenza and other avian viruses are circulating in the New York City area as well as important for understanding which ones are dangerous to both other birds and humans, and which are not.

“Data generated from the pilot phase of the New York City Virus Hunters program has already resulted in peer-reviewed scientific publication and entries of the first two avian paramyxoviruses ever identified in New York City’s pigeons,” said Dr. Krammer, Principal Investigator of the Virus Hunters program. “This new, five-year SEPA grant will enable us to extend and broaden this citizen science initiative so we can recruit and support many more middle and high school students to participate at large-scale sampling events. This allows us to expand the number of biospecimens we’re able to collect and analyze.”

BioBus has an established network of more than 800 New York City schools and community-based organizations serving primarily diverse student populations that are historically underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math. Through this new SEPA grant, Virus Hunters program leaders will refine their existing program infrastructure and expand the partnerships between organizations that currently participate to the New York City school system.

Over the course of the five-year program, Virus Hunters leaders envision recruiting and training 100 teachers and 6,000 students who will participate in sampling events across New York City. In addition, 25 high school students will partake in the initiative as paid Junior Research Scientist interns, supported by a network of BioBus and Mount Sinai mentors to spearhead the initiative. They will screen collected samples; perform nucleic acid extractions, sequencing, and sequence analysis; perform phylogenetic analysis, and get trained in general virology by expert mentors at Icahn Mount Sinai. Organizers hope some will become the next generation of leading virologists.

“Young people are smart and capable of making meaningful contributions to science when given the opportunity to engage in our scientific community, a community which is in dire need of a new generation of diverse and enthusiastic voices,” said Christine Marizzi, PhD, Director of Community Science at BioBus, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Microbiology at Icahn Mount Sinai and Co-Principal Investigator of the Virus Hunters program. “Throughout the program, students build their own identity as scientists, gaining both a sense of belonging in the scientific community and valuable experience as they pursue further science education and careers. We are thrilled and grateful to be able to expand our program through this new SEPA grant so that we can empower even more youth to help us participate in research that will make the Big Apple safer.”

This project is funded by a SEPA grant from the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences at the NIH. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, more than 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time—discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it. Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,400 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. Hospitals within the System are consistently ranked by Newsweek’s® “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals, Best in State Hospitals, World Best Hospitals and Best Specialty Hospitals” and by U.S. News & World Report’s® “Best Hospitals” and “Best Children’s Hospitals.” The Mount Sinai Hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report® “Best Hospitals” Honor Roll for 2023-2024.

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