Mark Siddall

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Mark E. Siddall is a Canadian[1] invertebrate zoologist and infectious disease expert[2].

Siddall's research has focused on the diversity and evolutionary biology of a wide range of parasites, from single-celled microbes to leeches. He has led expeditions throughout the world, most recently including South Sudan, Cambodia, the Lower Amazon of Brazil, and Madagascar. His work ranges from sequencing the whole genome of bed bugs uncovering hemotoxic venom compounds in blood feeding animals, to leveraging iDNA as a measure of endangered animal diversity in protected tropical forests[3]. In addition to over 160 peer reviewed publications[4], he is author of the whimsical[3] book “Poison: Sinister species with deadly consequences”[5]. Siddall is a committed science communicator making frequent public program appearances, at venues around New York City and more widely; even garnering recognition from the Entertainment Exchange of the National Academy of Sciences[3]. He has curated of the Irma and Paul Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life and other exhibitions including The Power of Poison, Life at the Limits: Stories of Amazing Species, Picturing Science, Undersea Oasis and Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease[3] in collaboration with President Jimmy_Carter. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1994, is a recipient of the Henry Baldwin Ward Medal from the American Society of Parasitologists and is a Fellow of The Explorers Club[3].


Education

Siddall completed a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology and Immunology, a Masters [6] and PhD in Parasitology[7] under the supervision of Sherwin S. Desser at the University of Toronto in 1988, 1991 and 1994, respectively.[8]

Career

After completing his PhD in 1994, Siddall started a postdoc at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science under the supervision of Eugene Burreson. Though Burreson is a noted marine leech systematist, their collaborations concerned protozoon parasites of oysters including "dermo" (Perkinsus marinus) and "MSX" (Haplosporidium nelsoni and other economically important species in the parasitic phylum Haplosporidia [9]. That research demonstrated that MSX began wiping out the Atlantic oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere as a result of the introduction of oysters from Asia[10]. It was during his time at The College of William and Mary that Siddall began working on a solution to the long-standing problem of correlating ordinal fossil age (stratigraphic) data to bifurcating tree structures in a manner that was not biased by the shape of the tree Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).|title=Abstract of Papers. Fifty-Seventh Annual Meeting, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology|date=1997|via=Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology}}</ref>[11].

Subsequently, he was a fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows from 1996 - 1999.[12] Siddall was hired at the American Museum of Natural History in July, 1999[1] and served there as a curator until September, 2020.

The American Museum of Natural History let him go in September 2020 after an outside law firm retained by the museum to represent its interests, Kaplan Hecker & Fink[13] led by Roberta Kaplan (co-founder of the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund[14]) provided the museum with a determination that he had sexually harassed and bullied a graduate student as conclusion to a complaint that did not include either of those charges. As part of the investigation, which occurred when the American Museum of Natural History was seeking to fill a $120 million budget gap[15], he was cited for violating a museum policy that prohibits sexual relationships between staff and mentees under their academic supervision[16]. Siddall denied anything sexual and denied that the graduate student was ever under his supervision[17]. The AMNH graduate school roster from that time period does not indicate any student being under his academic supervision either in the museum's own Richard Gilder Graduate School Comparative Biology program or in its Collaborative Program at partnering universities[18].

Siddall asserted that nothing of a sexual nature ever took place[17]. Worried about data-fabrication in a paper they were coauthoring, Siddall asked to remove his name from the paper on 22 May 2020[13][17]. Within days of that request[17] the graduate student filed a sexual assault complaint that was not upheld in the investigation[13].

Siddall also publicly disagreed with the lesser harassment findings that led to his dismissal, however, he chose to not appeal the decision to protect his family from legal costs as his son was entering remote Kindergarten, his daughter was applying to colleges and his wife was trying to complete her own graduate degree[13][17]. The American Museum of Natural History responded with termination, even though there was no record of a prior sexual harassment complaint against Siddall[17].

A New York Times investigation uncovered only that in 2017, Dr. Siddall and Dr. Susan Perkins had filed competing work-related complaints against each other[13][17] while Perkins was in the position of power (Chair of the Faculty Senate[19]). That complaint was about academic disputes and was not sexual in nature[13][17]. The museum found that Dr. Siddall had not violated any of the institution's policies, and exonerated him in full. Dr. Perkins admitted that the museum concluded "nothing wrong had happened"[13].

Research

Siddall has received millions of dollars in grant funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and several private foundations[20]. He has an h-index of 50 having authored 169 peer-reviewed publications that have been cited over 9,000 times[4]. Siddall’s expertise covers the biodiversity, detection and disease roles of pathogens and how they inform socioeconomic and ecosystem health[4]. His international field work has covered more than 30 countries across South American, Asia and Africa, mostly in developing countries including the Carter Center’s program in South Sudan[21].

He has actively engaged the transformation of DNA sequencing from the days of reading radioactive traces by-eye to the current next-gen (NGS) frameworks and their myriad applications. At the Institute of Comparative Genomics, Siddall spearheaded the build-out the NGS program at the American Museum of Natural History while pushing for a bioinformatics team as a community resource. He has sequenced whole animal genomes from scratch (i.e., unguided “de novo”) leveraging Illumina, Moleculo, and PacBio for the Bed Bug genome, and most recently 10x Genomics for the whole genome of the Medicinal Leech[22]. His published work includes RNAseq transcriptomics, much of which is tissue-specific (e.g., anticoagulants in salivary gland cells of blood-feeding vectors)[22].

Siddall’s research ranges from genome-wide screens of tuberculosis against immune system reporter genes to deep metagenomic assessments of biodiversity and their associated microbiomes[4]. He has innovated on environmental DNA (eDNA/iDNA), metagenomics and high-resolution scientific imaging[4], much of which was translated for public consumption in the award winning exhibition (Picturing Science).

He has published extensively on leech systematics.[23][24][25]

References

  1. ^ a b "INTRODUCTION OF PRESIDENT MARK E. SIDDALL - ProQuest". search.proquest.com.
  2. ^ "Disease experts reveal their biggest worries about the next pandemic". 2021-03-12.
  3. ^ a b c d e The Explorers Club (2018-04-30). "Public Lecture Series with Mark Siddall - The Bloodsucker Proxy: Terrestrial Leeches and Revolutionary New Techniques For Genetic Forest Sampling".
  4. ^ a b c d e "Google Scholar Profile for Mark Siddall". Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  5. ^ "Poison: Sinister Species with Deadly Consequences - Mark Siddall - Google Books". Google.com. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  6. ^ "U of T Magazine | Winter 2014". Issuu.
  7. ^ "Mark Siddall". World Science Festival. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  8. ^ Siddall, Mark E. (2016). "Presidential Address: Reinvention and Resolve". The Journal of Parasitology. 102 (6): 566–571. doi:10.1645/16-113. JSTOR 44810235. PMID 27626125. S2CID 11802614.
  9. ^ "Google Scholar results for Siddall Burreson Haplosporidia Perkinsus". Retrieved 2021-04-09 – via Scholar.Google.com.
  10. ^ Burreson, E.M. (2004). "A review of recent information on the Haplosporidia, with special reference to Haplosporidium nelsoni (MSX disease)". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  11. ^ Mark Siddall (1998). "Stratigraphic Fit to Phylogenies: A Proposed Solution" – via Cladistics. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. ^ "All Events | U-M LSA University of Michigan Herbarium". lsa.umich.edu.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g Jacobs, Julia (2020-10-02). "Museum Fires Curator Who It Says Sexually Harassed Student Researcher" – via NYTimes.com.
  14. ^ "Time's Up Co-Founder to Represent Media Men List Creator". New York Times. Retrieved 2018-10-16.
  15. ^ Jacobs, Julia (2020-05-06). "Natural History Museum Slashing Staff With Layoffs and Furloughs" – via NYTimes.com.
  16. ^ "Richard Gilder Graduate School Handbook for Students and Faculty on Academic and Conduct Policies and Procedures" (PDF). AMNH.org. Retrieved 2021-02-22.
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h "Response to New York Times Inquiry – September 23, 2020". Internet Archive. Retrieved 2021-02-22.
  18. ^ "Meet Our PhD Students". Internet Archive. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  19. ^ "Resolution To Appoint Susan Perkins with Immediate Tenure" (PDF). CUNY.edu. Retrieved 2019-11-25.
  20. ^ MarkSiddall.net (2021-04-08). "Grants Awarded to Mark Siddall".
  21. ^ MarkSiddall.net (2021-04-08). "Mark Siddall Explorer".
  22. ^ a b MarkSiddall.net (2021-04-08). "Mark Siddall Peer Reviewed Publications".
  23. ^ Siddall, Mark E.; Burreson, Eugene M. (October 1, 1996). "Leeches (Oligochaeta?: Euhirudinea), their phylogeny and the evolution of life-history strategies". Hydrobiologia. 334 (1): 277–285. doi:10.1007/BF00017378. S2CID 21736028 – via Springer Link.
  24. ^ Siddall, Mark E.; Burreson, Eugene M. (February 1, 1998). "Phylogeny of Leeches (Hirudinea) Based on Mitochondrial CytochromecOxidase Subunit I". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 9 (1): 156–162. doi:10.1006/mpev.1997.0455. PMID 9479704 – via ScienceDirect.
  25. ^ "Download Limit Exceeded". citeseerx.ist.psu.edu.
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