Jason Netland and Marion Pepper: '(Jason) is fearless about trying new things. He is also a thoughtful colleague who cares not only about the science, but also the people on his team.'
Jason Netland was at a key decision point in his life.
In 2009, he had just completed a Ph.D. at the University of Iowa, the state where he had lived his entire life and, at age 28, was a pursing a post-doc position in “a hardcore immunology lab.” He interviewed for positions at the National Institutes of Health, the University of Virginia, and the University of Washington, each of which would have set him on a promising research trajectory.
So why did he choose the UW?
“I’m not really an East Coast person,” said Netland, 43. “It’s more laid back here in Seattle. People are friendlier, and there’s the beautiful natural environment – the water, the mountains.”
He joined the UW Department of Immunology and, over the next five years working under the direction of Michael Bevan, Ph.D., published in several journals, including the European Journal of Immunology. Many of the peer-reviewed articles dealt with the effects of T-cells on the mosquito-borne West Nile Virus.
Five years later in 2014, Netland was ready for a change. He was expecting to be offered a research position with Amgen, the multi-national biopharmaceutical firm. The following day, however, the company announced it was shuttering all its operations in the Seattle area and eliminating 660 positions. Make that 661 positions.
The Seattle Times headline read: “Amgen’s exit a new blow for Seattle biotech industry.”
Netland, with his characteristic problem-solving skills and determination, knew that the majority of those let go would be looking for new positions in the Seattle biotech sector, so he chose another direction – albeit temporarily.
"I did non-science for a while and let the chaos die down,” he said.
Those “non-science” positions allowed him to sharpen his skills in management, logistics, and supply chain operations. And in his spare time, Netland developed an interest in curling, the Winter Olympics sport that dates back to the 1500s.
Two-plus years and many curling competitions later, the chaos subsided. Netland received a call from Marion Pepper, Ph.D. in the UW Immunology Department. She needed a research scientist and he was ready to return to the lab.
'He led the team in designing new assays and reagents to decipher the immune response to SARS-COV-2. His knowledge of virology and immunology perfectly positioned him to do so.'
“Jason is a natural problem solver,” said Pepper, now the Chair of the Department. “He is an incredibly creative, intelligent individual, who is also naturally compelled to ‘figure things out.’ These are great skills to have as a scientist.”
Pepper tasked him with the challenge to examine how B-cells respond to a malaria vaccine, especially on people not typically exposed to malaria, as opposed to populations where the mosquito-borne virus is endemic, such as sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South America, the Caribbean, and Asia. Netland has been working with colleagues at the Seattle-based non-profit PATH, as well as a major pharmaceutical firm. He is currently in the throes of summarizing the research for his colleagues’ review.
Another issue factored into an important paper Netland helped develop: COVID-19.
“He led the team in designing new assays and reagents to decipher the immune response to SARS-COV-2.” Pepper said. “His knowledge of virology and immunology perfectly positioned him to do so, such that the first COVID paper from our lab was completed by August, 2020.”
That paper, “Functional SARS-CoV-2-Specific Immune Memory Persists after Mild COVID-19,” was published in the journal Cell; authors include researchers from the Benaroya Research Institute, UW Department of Pediatrics, Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and the UW Institute for Protein Design.
So, what is Netland looking ahead toward?
Contributing to the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology, the collaboration launched last December among the Brotman Baty Institute, the Allen Institute, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the University of Washington. It is intended to design new technologies to record the history of cells in real time.
Pepper is one of five lead researchers on the four-year, $70 million project. Netland will join others working on ENGRAM, an emerging biotechnological methodology that plays a central role in the premise – and promise – of Sea-Hub.
It’s no surprise Netland is one of the researchers Pepper chose for this endeavor.
“He is fearless about trying new things,” she said. “He is also a thoughtful colleague who cares not only about the science, but also the people on his team.”
