David Needle

David Needle is senior veterinary pathologist at the New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and a clinical associate professor in the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture at the University of New Hampshire. Below is our correspondence with Dr. Needle about his own research and his mentoring experiences with undergraduate students.     

What is your research focus? 

Our research is “focused” on microbial ecology and emerging disease ecology. I use the quotation marks, because when considered initially the work appears pretty unfocused—we have ongoing or recent funding looking at the genetics of bacteria and their environments associated with mastitis in cattle, the microbiome and pathogen carriage of ticks removed from wildlife, morbidity and mortality in fishers and grey fox, ecotoxicology in mesocarnivores, an emerging pathogen in toads, a novel respiratory pathogen in dogs, and other previous or ongoing work in porcupines, guinea pigs, muskrats, and birds.

If you “zoom out” our focus is the ecology of pathogen emergence in the context of One Health (the confluence of human, animal, and environmental health). We are interested in what anthropogenic and natural pressures combine to influence the emergence of a new pathogen, or the addition of the capacity to cause disease (and resist antimicrobials) in a microbe.

What interests you most about this line of research? 

I sincerely love to learn. The research portion of my work is super rewarding. First, we get to characterize something new, be it a disease phenotype, or a new pathogen. Then we get to try to understand how it fits into the larger picture. I have been extraordinarily lucky to have a partnership with Kelley Thomas, Joe Sevigny, Lawrence Gordon, Krys Morris, Adane Nigatu, Steve Simpson, Jeff Hall, and Muriel Kelly at the entire Hubbard Center for Genome Studies, who have all been instrumental in most of our work, and have patiently taught me so much. 

How does your clinical work inform your research?

Our research takes clinical diagnostic findings, patterns of diagnoses, disease incidence, etc. and applies cutting edge genomics and analytics to get at the “why.” This is outside of my training as a veterinary pathologist – and through time in the presence of researchers, reading, and getting my questions answered by Kelley, Joe, and Lawrence, I have been able to find a platform of knowledge to keep asking questions. All of our work is enmeshed in clinical diagnostics and the ever-changing landscape of genomics and analytics.

As a pathologist in the New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, you've formed relationships with many researchers and diagnosticians both regionally and nationally. Could you tell us more about this collaborative approach? 

Based on our interests in (a) finding the cause of an unusual morbidity or mortality event, (b) contextualizing these findings (pathogens, toxins, diseases, etc.) in terms of population ecology, and (c) learning new stuff, we have organically grown to collaborate with wildlife agency biologists throughout our region. I think there are a few things that contribute to this growth—we are excited to do the work and love to learn; we have a knowledgeable team that is eager to collaborate and help whenever asked; and we are cognizant of who does the analytics, etc. for what we don’t have the capability to do onsite. Some of these other labs and collaborators are from projects we have done in the past, and some are from my training. Usually, if we find something new that we are excited about there is someone who researches that topic and they are excited too, and a collaboration is born.  

What is the purpose of a mentoring relationship? What should the student and you gain from it? 

My job as a mentor, as I see it, is to facilitate a research experience, provide guard rails to prevent huge wastes of time and energy, and to ask questions of the mentees in terms of their hypotheses and plans. I try to make sure that I ask what they like, what they know, what they want to know, and what they want to do in the future. I hope they get to make some data, become a subject matter expert in their project’s field, and experience collaboration and the struggle of science. For me being a mentor is super rewarding—there are so many intelligent, driven, and talented students looking for experiences. I also enjoy hearing what someone else thinks about when approaching our data and work. 

Did your undergraduate studies or an important mentor influence your own research trajectory? 

Over my life I have had a lot of mentors that have influenced my research trajectory. Mr. Robert Santin was my trumpet teacher as a kid and he taught me to love the rigor and grind of learning and working to create something you are proud of. Mr. John King was my math teacher from eighth grade through my senior year of high school and he taught me that exploring and working within the field you are passionate about makes working hard fun. The poet Mr. Peter Richards, my mentor in creative writing as an undergraduate at Tufts University, taught me to sit, observe, think, and edit my thoughts and writing. Drs. Thomas Mullaney and Dalen Agnew who mentored me during my residency at Michigan State University showed me that research has to be based on technical proficiency and knowledge-based expertise. Dr. Kelley Thomas here at UNH has shown me how to think broadly and comparatively, and always strive to learn more. 

Please describe a memorable mentoring experience or mentee. 

Ms. Tessa Baillargeon was a wonderful mentee. During the period of transition when my research program was just coming to be Tessa came into the program. Not only did Tessa learn many different skills, and dive headfirst into all tasks, she organized and streamlined the whole program in its infancy and was a remarkable team member. Ms. Baillargeon is headed to veterinary school this fall! Ms. Samantha Schade (nee Leef) was an undergraduate researcher who performed a really cool study into the physiology of the vestibular apparatus of cephalopods. Ms. Schade was so fantastic as an undergraduate, and now she is in her first year as a PhD student with our group here at UNH! 

Please describe any difficulties or challenges you have had in mentoring undergraduates. 

I often have a large group of undergraduate mentees, and this is an intentional choice to offer opportunities to as many of our great students as possible. This, in combination with my job being heavily skewed towards performing diagnostics, means that I am not able to micromanage undergraduates. While almost all of the students I have mentored have been quite self-sufficient, those that need more direct oversight and frequent redirection have struggled. One thing that I have been surprised about is when students will reach out to someone about the work and not include me on the communication. All of the materials, etc. for their work comes from our group, and I am ultimately responsible for it, so being included on communications is important to me. 

What advice or tips would you give a faculty member new to undergraduate mentoring and/or for undergraduates seeking a mentor? 

I would encourage faculty to consider mentoring, and also to vet potential mentees through face-to-face meetings and polling their colleagues that have taught these students to learn about their capacities, perceived strengths, etc. Undergraduates should read through all of the faculty profiles and just be forward and brave and ask people who do things they like. Be on time (early), be ready to work, be honest, and be engaged in the work of the whole group. 

 You can learn more about David’s research at:  https://sites.usnh.edu/meed-lab/