Colorado State University

Celebrate the Life, Career, and Legacy of University Distinguished Professor, Dr. Ian Orme

The Colorado State University community and President Tony Frank invite you to share in a professional tribute and celebration of the life of Dr. Ian Orme, world-renowned scientist and University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State.

Dr. Orme became a University Distinguished Professor in 2009, after joining the CSU faculty in microbiology, immunology, and pathology in 1986 and becoming a full professor in 1995. He was one of the world’s leading experts in immunology and therapy for tuberculosis, celebrated as an innovative, visionary, and generous colleague, whose research transformed our understanding of TB and its treatment.

Dr. Orme is only the second actively serving UDP to pass on while in this role. He will be deeply missed and leaves behind a legacy that will carry on through his friends and colleagues who trained under him, stood beside him, and have gone on to forge their own distinguished academic and research careers.

He would expect nothing less from us than to raise a glass and tell a story
about a man we knew who was larger than life and contributed so much to this University and to the world.

In Memory – Dr. Ian Orme

Dr. Ian Orme, University Distinguished Professor, passed away on June 19, 2018. Read his obituary. His arrival to CSU in 1986 helped establish the formal founding of the Mycobacteria Research Laboratories (MRL) and leaves a legacy of successful researchers in the MRL and science community. Read More…

In Memoriam Dr. Ian M. Orme (1652-2018), published in Tuberculosis, by Dr. Patrick Brennan, University Distinguished Professor, Colorado State University

An international team led by researchers at Colorado State University has found that human contact with wild armadillos — including eating the meat — has contributed to extremely high infection rates of a pathogen that can cause leprosy in Pará, Brazil. Read more…

2018 World TB Day with the MRL

Colorado high school students get close-up look at tuberculosis research & hear from survivors at annual World TB Day events hosted by the MRL. Read more…

Amoebas & Infectious Diseases

MRL director, Mary Jackson, is leading an interdisciplinary One Health Initiative team to study the interaction of amoebas with various infectious diseases, including bovine tuberculosis and meliodosis. As part of this team, graduate student and CSU Vice President for Research Fellow, David Markman, published the insightful results on the hosting of Yersinia pestis (plague bacteria) in amoebae in Emerging Infectious Diseases, garnering him national recognition. Read More…

Brendan Podell awarded 2017 Zoetis Research Excellence Award

Mycobacteria Research Laboratories member, Brendan Podell, was awarded Colorado State University’s 2017 Zoetis Research Excellence Award for his ongoing research on  comorbidity of tuberculosis and diabetes. Along with this recognition, he gave the keynote address at CSU College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ 2018 Research Day to inspire the next generation of research excellence.  Read more…

World TB Day 2017

Dozens of northern Colorado high-school students heard from TB survivor Tenzin Kunor and gained an inside look at an infectious disease that kills an estimated 1.5 million people each year. Read More…

International Intrigue

A group of CSU tuberculosis researchers recently traveled to India to teach essential laboratory skills for promising young scientists at South Asian University. The visitors received an unexpected thank-you. Read more…

International Collaborations on Leprosy in the Amazon Rainforest

John Spencer spends nearly six months of every year in the Amazon region of Brazil working to end the stigma associated with leprosy and to help those infected understand, manage, and defeat the disease. As part of the MRL, he has been dedicated for the past 15 years on studying M. leprae, the tiny bacterium that causes leprosy, and his ongoing collaboration with Dr. Claudio Salgado is creating healthier communities in rural Brazil. Watch the videos below to learn more about how the MRL and the One Health Institute at Colorado State University are involved, and read more… 

Knife to Scalpel

A one-of-a-kind instrument built at Colorado State University lets scientists map cellular composition in three dimensions at the nanoscale, allowing researchers to watch how cells respond to new medications at the most minute level ever observed.  Read more…

Team lands NIH funds to examine tuberculosis and metabolism

The MRL team from Colorado State University will play a crucial role in a new project funded by the National Institutes of Health to examine factors that make people susceptible to the bacterium that causes tuberculosis and to discover new treatment strategies. Read more…

MRL Researchers – Discovery

MRL researchers have discovered that the pathogen, Mycobacterium leprae, can live for months inside protective host amoebae that are common in water, soil and plants – then can be easily transferred to trigger infection. Read more…