Press — Messer Lab

2026

Cornell Chronicle — "Seed banks may complicate gene drives aimed at controlling weeds." (Apr 3, 2026)

2025

Cornell Chronicle — "Key adaptation helps nomadic people survive in extreme desert." (Sep 26, 2025)

The Guardian — "Kenya's Turkana people genetically adapted to live in harsh environment, study suggests." (Sep 18, 2025)

Science — "Trade-offs and human adaptation at the extremes." (Sep 18, 2025)

Berkeley News — "Genetic study of nomadic herders in Kenya shows what it takes to adapt to desert living." (Sep 18, 2025)

The Scientist — "A Gene Drive with a Disappearing Act Can Aid Pest Control." (Feb 14, 2025)

2024

Cornell Engineering — "ORIE junior wins Goldwater Scholarship." (Apr 16, 2024)

2022

Eco-Evo Evo-Eco — "SLiM 4: Multispecies eco-evolutionary modeling (a personal history)." (Dec 1, 2022)

Science — "How butterfly wings got their pattern." (Oct 20, 2022)

Cornell Chronicle — "Butterfly wing patterns emerge from ancient 'junk' DNA." (Oct 21, 2022)

The New York Times — "Humans Have a Long History of Making 'Very Bad Decisions' to Save Animals." (Sep 16, 2022)

2020

UC San Diego News Center — "Scientists Set a Path for Field Trials of Gene Drive Organisms." (Dec 18, 2020)

Laborjournal — "Nützlich, lästig, idealisiert." (Nov 11, 2020)

Cornell Chronicle — "Cornell startup Combplex wins $500K in 76West competition." (Oct 22, 2020)

Cornell Chronicle — "Merrill Scholars near and far honor their teachers, mentors." (May 21, 2020)

Cornell Chronicle — "Improved CRISPR gene drive solves problems of old tech." (Mar 3, 2020)

2019

Science Daily — "Effective strategies for safeguarding CRISPR gene-drive experiments." (Jan 22, 2019)

2018

PNAS — "Janzen's mountain passes hypothesis is comprehensively tested in its fifth decade." (Nov 21, 2018)

CSU College News — "Integrative research team uncovers new clues behind tropical mountains' stunning biodiversity." (Nov 5, 2018)

Cornell Chronicle — "Study reveals why tropical mountains are so biodiverse." (Nov 5, 2018)

Nature — "Machine learning spots natural selection at work in human genome." (Nov 1, 2018)

Science News — "In lab tests, this gene drive wiped out a population of mosquitoes." (Sep 24, 2018)

Eco-Evo Evo-Eco — "On Simulation, and genealogies." (Sep 8, 2018)

The Molecular Ecologist — "Scriptable evolutionary simulations in SLiM 2." (May 25, 2018)

BioScience — "Researchers Hit Roadblocks with Gene Drives." (May 22, 2018)

Genes to Genomes — "Three GENETICS Articles from 2017 Recognized with Editors' Choice Awards." (Mar 2, 2018)

2017

Cornell Chronicle — "Entrepreneurs present beehive monitoring technology to D.C. policymakers." (Nov 16, 2017)

Quanta Magazine — "New Model Warns About CRISPR Gene Drives in the Wild." (Nov 15, 2017)

Nature — "US defense agencies grapple with gene drives." (Jul 21, 2017)

The Economist — "A promising means of pest control meets some evolutionary truths." (Jul 20, 2017)

GEN — "Gene Drives Will Need a Tune-Up to Power Past Resistance." (Jul 20, 2017)

PLoS Genetics — "The gene drive bubble: New realities." (Jul 20, 2017)

Science News — "Resistance to CRISPR gene drives may arise easily." (Jul 20, 2017)

Gizmodo — "Genetically Engineering Nature Will Be Way More Complicated Than We Thought." (Jul 20, 2017)

NOVA Next — "How Our Ancient Origins Are Guiding Modern Medicine." (Jul 13, 2017)

Eco-Evo Evo-Eco — "Simulating continuous space in SLiM 2." (Apr 22, 2017)

WIRED — "Creating Zika-Proof Mosquitoes Means Rigging Natural Selection." (Apr 5, 2017)

Genetics — "CRISPR/Cas9 Gene Drive: Growing Pains for a New Technology." (Mar 1, 2017)

KU Today — "Research shows nature can beat back scientific tinkering with genes of entire species." (Mar 1, 2017)

Deutschlandradio Kultur — "Superwerkzeug der Gentechnik: Wird die Evolution durch CRISPR zum Auslaufmodell?" (Feb 9, 2017)

Nature — "Gene drives thwarted by emergence of resistant organisms." (Jan 31, 2017)

2016

The Scientist — "Natural selection kept Neanderthal DNA in modern humans." (Dec 29, 2016)

NOVA Next — "For gene drives, resistance may be inevitable." (Oct 5, 2016)

Genes to Genomes — "Can gene drives survive in the wild?" (Sep 27, 2016)

The Atlantic — "When Evolution Fights Back Against Genetic Engineering." (Sep 12, 2016)

Quanta Magazine — "Genetic engineering to clash with evolution." (Sep 8, 2016)

Science News — "Seeing the upside in gene drives fatal flaw." (Aug 20, 2016)

Cornell Chronicle — "Warbler genomes look to be 99.97 percent alike." (Aug 18, 2016)

All About Birds — "Warblers are 99.97 percent alike genetically." (Jul 6, 2016)

Eco-Evo Evo-Eco — "Announcing SLiM 2.0." (Apr 5, 2016)

2015

Genes to Genomes — "Modeling the promise and peril of gene drives." (Nov 13, 2015)

Cornell Chronicle — "New gene drive technology evokes hopes and fears." (Oct 1, 2015)

CALS Notes — "Messer tracking rapid evolution with powerful new tools." (Mar 3, 2015)