Stephen Beckett

11/09/2020:	Our paper measuring infected cyanobacteria in the North Pacific and quantifying viral-induced mortality is now online.
18/05/2020:	I helped instruct the 2020 QBioS Hands-on Modeling Virtual Workshop on Epidemics.
15/05/2020:	Slate featured an op-ed, written with Joshua Weitz, about reporting lags and the interpretation of case data, and the possibility of epidemic plateaus in Georgia.
07/05/2020:	Our paper modelling the potential of "serological shielding" is now publsihed in Nature Medicine.
01/05/2020:	Press: WABE covers our intial COVID-19 projections in Georgia using MAGE.
28/04/2020:	We released an executive summary report for Georgia on the potential for COVID-19 to return if physical distancing interventions are lifted too soon using a metapopulation age-structured epidemiological model (MAGE).
12/03/2020:	I presented a Biological Sciences seminar at the University of Chicago at Illinois on "Quantifying the ecological relevance of grazing and viral lysis in marine microbial communities".
02/03/2020:	I gave the Microbial Dynamics seminar at Georgia Tech on our work on estimating mortality in marine microbial communities.
17/02/2020:	I presented our work on modelling microbial populations in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre at Ocean Sciences Meeting 2020 in San Diego.
06/02/2020:	I gave the Physics of Living Systems seminar titled: "Quantifying the ecological relevance of grazing and viral lysis in marine microbial communities".
01/12/2019:	Our new paper describing how biogeochemistry relates to changes in sea surface height at Station ALOHA is now published in the Journal Of Marine Research.
02/11/2019:	Got pedalling in support of spin4 crohn's and colitis.
15/09/2019:	Arrived at the Technion to take part in the Phytoplankton Mortality Workshop to cross-compare phytoplankton mortality measurements.
02/06/2019:	Our paper describing a model to estimate carbon fluxes through grazing and viral infection is now published in Environmental Microbiology.
29/05/2019:	I presented a professional development talk to the Quantitative Biosciences Graduate Program titled "Inside the Reviewing Process".
13/04/2019:	Our new paper about size-dependent encounter rates between microbes and their predators is now published at Frontiers in Marine Science. I wrote a summary here.
30/03/2019:	Was on hand to discuss the Science.Art.Wonder project today (and on 23/03/2019 at the Atlanta Science Festival) with Emily Madsen. One piece "Submerged" explores the capacity for viruses to affect marine ecosystems; whilst the second, "Through a different Model" focuses on the process and art of modelling using a size-structured phytoplankton model I am developing as an example.
25/03/2019:	Curated the @biotweeps twitter account for a week where I enthused about modelling and marine viruses!
28/02/2019:	I have been promoted to Research Scientist I at Georgia Tech.
07/12/2018:	Hosted Emily Madsen in the WeitzLab to discuss communicating my research through art as part of the Science.Art.Wonder project.
03/12/2018:	I gave a talk at the SCOPE annual meeting titled: "Diel with it: Data-model comparisons of diel ecological oscillations around station ALOHA".
10/11/2018:	I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in Atlanta.
20/09/2018:	I presented "Viral Lysis vs. Grazing: perspectives on phytoplankton mortality” at the 5th Georgia Tech Postdoctoral Research Symposium.
04/09/2018:	Our new paper on modelling the robustness of dilution based estimates of rates of viral-induced mortality is now published in Frontiers in Microbiology. I wrote a summary here.
30/08/2018:	Our software package for calculating nestedness, FALCON, has been used as an example of how to wrap a MATLAB package in python by KCL researcher Orazio Angelini.
20/06/2018:	Presented a talk: "Viral Lysis vs. Grazing: Perspectives on Phytoplankton Mortality” at the 9th Aquatic Viral Workshop in Lincoln, Nebraska (USA).
13/02/2018:	Presented a poster and co-chaired a session on "A Matter of Life and Death: The Role of Microbial Interactions in Mediating Biogeochemical Cycles" at the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2018 in Portland (USA).
13/12/2017:	Presented a seminar at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth (UK) on: "Quantifying the ecological relevance of viral lysis in complex microbial communitites"
19/10/2017:	Gave a presentation: “Estimating viral impact on marine phytoplankton” in the GT Biological Sciences Microbial Dynamics seminar series.
13/10/2017:	Hosted Sarah Hu (USC) in the WeitzLab and worked on problems relating to timeseries analysis and Eukaryote communities.
21/09/2017:	I organised and chaired the sessions at the 4th Annual Postdoctoral Research Symposium at Georgia Tech – 24 great speakers from across the campus!
20/09/2017:	Our brief communication arising: Lysis, lsyogeny and virus-microbe ratios has been published in Nature – also see a response to our correspondence here.
06/07/2017:	I am helping to organise the 4th Postdoctoral Research Symposium at Georgia Tech to take place on the 21st September 2017.
15/05/2017:	Our work on attempting to separate grazing effects from niche competition effects in phytoplankton dilution experiments is now published in PLOS ONE.
31/03/2017:	The algorithms I advocate using for computing modularity for weighted bipartite networks are now the default behaviour in the latest version of the R bipartite package (v2.08) on CRAN.
08/03/2017:	Hosted David Talmy (MIT) in the WeitzLab and worked on problems relating to grazers and viruses.
03/03/2017:	I attended the ASLO Ocean sciences meeting and presented work on the dilution method in Hawai`i.
18/07/2016:	I presented a poster related to our dilution method work at Viruses of Microbes 2016 in Liverpool.
11/07/2016:	I spoke at the 8th Viral Aquatic Workshop in Plymouth about the theoretical underpinnings of the dilution method for estimating plankton mortality.
23/01/2016:	I attended my graduation ceremony at the University of Exeter, where I was duly hooded, gowned and embraced!
20/01/2016:	My paper on weighted modularity in bipartite networks is now up at RSOS. I wrote a short blog post about it.
19/09/2015:	Spoke at the "Living systems: from interaction patterns to critical behavior" workshop in Venice about phage-bacteria coevolutionary dynamics.
07/09/2015:	Completed my first review for the journal: Methods in Ecology and Evolution.
17/08/2015:	I have joined the Weitz lab @ Georgia Tech as a PostDoc.
29/07/2015:	My degree has been officially conferred - I am now Dr. Stephen Beckett!
19/07/2015:	New website is being designed (quite excited by how this is turning out!)

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Link to my CV: Download

I am a Research Scientist in the in the Weitz lab at Georgia Tech. I use mathematical and computational methods to investigate and solve ecological and environmental problems. In this sense, I like to term myself a computational ecologist. My current research interests lie in investigating the ecology of aquatic microbial communities. Previously, I graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Geography and Mathematics from the University of Leeds in 2010, an MRes in Mathematics in the Living Environment from the University of York in 2011 and a PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Exeter in 2015. During my masters program I completed a research internship with the Computational Science Lab at Microsoft Research in Cambridge.

I believe one step towards making science more available in general, is to provide free and open access to research materials. I do not agree with the predominantly expensive open access options provided by many publishers, but am a strong advocate of making pre/post-prints of my research available. If I write a paper, I would sure like to make it as easy as possible, for as many people as possible, to be able to read and use the information discovered! Specific journal policies on this matter can be found using SHERPA/RoMEO.

In my spare time I enjoy being in the great outdoors, especially on the coast. Some of the other things I like to do are playing the harmonica (badly), reading books and playing computer games. Chances are, I am thinking about the sea right now.

Marine Viruses

There are estimated to be over 10³⁰ viruses of prokaryotic bacteria, known as bacteriophage or just phage, in the worlds oceans (Suttle, 2005) which makes them an important component of the global marine ecosystem and ocean biogeochemistry. However, much is unknown about the strengths of these interactions and the coevolutionary processes that mediate community structure and dynamics of microbial ecosystems. Better understanding of how these processes influence one another on the small scale e.g. in chemostats or flasks, may lay down the foundations for embedding virus population models into circulation models of oceanic sizes - which may further inform about how viruses can control biogeochemical cycling.

Bipartite network analysis

The infection pattern between phage and bacteria is an example of a bipartite (two mode) network. Finding and attempting to understand the structures in these types of networks can help explain how communities organise and behave. I have a keen interest in the patterns of nestedness (a generalist to specialist gradient of overlapping range) and modularity (communities formed between the two sets of nodes). These concepts have been largely applied to ecological datasets - but there are many other types of bipartite networks out there where these analyses could prove useful.

The categories below highlight my publications, software and other research outputs. Click on a category to expand or contract it. I try my best to provide open access to all my research, but please email me if you are finding it hard to access something I've published. You may also be interested in viewing my Google Scholar and ResearchGate profiles.

>Publications >

			Mruwat N., Carlson M.C.G., Goldin S., Ribalet F., Kirzner S., Hulata Y., Beckett S.J., Shitrit D., Weitz J.S., Armbrust E.V., Lindell D. A single-cell polony method reveals low levels of infected Prochlorococcus in oligotrophic waters despite high cyanophage abundances 2020. The ISME Journal.       [readcube]
			Weitz J.S., Beckett S.J., Coenen A.R., Demory D., Dominguez-Mirazo M., Dushoff J., Leung C.-Y., Li G., Măgălie A., Park S.W., Rodriguez-Gonzalez R., Shashwat S., Zhao C.Y. Modeling shield immunity to reduce COVID-19 epidemic spread 2020. Nature Medicine.       [preprint] [code]
			Barone B., Coenen A.R., Beckett S.J., McGillicuddy Jr. D.J., Weitz J.S., Karl D.M. The ecological and biogeochemical state of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is linked to sea surface height 2019. Journal of Marine Research 77(S):215-245.
			Talmy, D., Beckett S.J., Taniguchi D.A.A., Brussaard C.P.D., Weitz J.S., Follows M.J. An empirical model of carbon flow through marine viruses and microzooplankton grazers 2019. Environmental Microbiology 21(6): 2171-2181.       [readcube]
			Talmy D., Beckett S.J., Zhang A., Taniguchi D.A.A., Weitz J.S., Follows M.J. Contrasting Controls on Microzooplankton Grazing and Viral Infection of Microbial Prey 2019. Frontiers in Marine Science 6: 182.       [blog]
			Beckett S.J., Weitz J.S. The Effect of Strain Level Diversity on Robust Inference of Virus-Induced Mortality of Phytoplankton 2018. Frontiers in Microbiology 9: 1850.       [preprint] [code] [blog]
			Weitz J.S., Beckett S.J., Brum J.R., Cael B.B., Dushoff J. Lysis, lysogeny, and virus-microbe ratios 2017. Nature 549(7672): E1-E3.       [readcube] [preprint] [code]
			Beckett S.J., Weitz J.S. Disentangling niche competition from grazing mortality in phytoplankton dilution experiments 2017. PLOS ONE 12(5): e0177517.       [preprint] [code]
			Beckett S.J. Improved community detection in weighted bipartite networks 2016. Royal Society Open Science 3: 140536.       [code] [blog]
			Beckett S.J. Nestedness and modularity in bipartite networks 2015. PhD Thesis, University of Exeter, UK.
			Cowley L.A., Beckett S.J., Chase-Topping M., Perry N., Dallman T.J., Gally D.L., Jenkins C. Analysis of whole genome sequencing for the Escherichia coli O157:H7 typing phages 2015. BMC Genomics 16: 271.
			Beckett S.J., Boulton C.A., Williams H.T.P. FALCON: a software package for analysis of nestedness in bipartite networks 2014. [v1; ref status: indexed, http://f1000r.es/3z8] F1000Research 3: 185.       [code]
			Watts A.J.R., Lewis C., Goodhead R.M., Beckett S.J., Moger J., Tyler C.R., Galloway T.S. Uptake and retention of microplastics by the shore crab Carcinus maenas 2014. Environmental Science & Technology 48(15): 8823-8830.
			Beckett S.J., Williams H.T.P. Coevolutionary diversification creates nested-modular structure in phage-bacteria interaction networks 2013. Interface Focus 3: 20130033.       [blog]

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>Software >

		Beckett S.J. weighted-modularity-LPAwbPLUS: Improved community detection in weighted bipartite networks 2015. Zenodo.
		Beckett S.J., Boulton C.A., Williams H.T.P. FALCON: nestedness statistics for bipartite networks 2014. figshare.

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>Data >

Beckett S.J., Williams H.T.P. Synthetic matrix ensemble for nestedness analysis 2015. figshare.

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>Posters >

		Beckett S.J., Williams H.T.P. Coevolved nestedness and modularity in phage-bacteria infection networks 2013. figshare.
		Beckett S.J., Williams H.T.P. Towards trait-based models for aquatic virology 2012. figshare.

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>Miscellaneous >

Beckett S.J. Online tools for researchers 2013. figshare.

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>In progress >

		Muratore D., Boysen A.K., Harke M.J., Becker K.W., Casey J.R., Coesel S.N., Mende D.R., Wilson S.T., Aylward F.O., Eppley J.M., Visolova A., Peng S., Rodgriguez-Gonzalez R.A., Beckett S.J., Armbrust E.V., DeLong E.F., Karl D.M., White A.E., Zehr J.P., Van Mooy B.A.S, Dyhrman S.T., Ingalls A.E., Weitz J.S. Community-scale Synchronization and Temporal Partitioning of Gene Expression, Metabolism, and Lipid Biosynthesis in Oligotrophic Ocean Surface Waters. In review.       [preprint]
		Beckett S.J., Dominguez-Mirazo M., Lee S., Andris C., Weitz J.S. Spread of COVID-19 through Georgia, USA. Near-term projections and impacts of social distancing via a metapopulation model. In review.       [preprint]

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