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About me.
DONE About me. \U0001F44B
Welcome to my site!
My name is Zachary Billman. I'm an MD-PhD student at UNC Chapel Hill in Ed Miao's lab. The curious reader may be thinking: "But Zach, Ed Miao's lab is at Duke now! What does that make you?" What an astute question! I am a card-carrying UNC Microbiology and Immunology student who happens to have all of their research take place at Duke. This makes for very interesting basketball viewing parties with my Duke friends!
My Research and Science Interests.
I am in the 4th year of my PhD studying the host-pathogen interaction between the intracellular fungus Histoplasma capsulatum and macrophages. There are many unstudied curiosities regarding the innate immune response to Histoplasma spp. and other intracellular fungi that I think are quite interesting.
Hobbies to be found here.
Besides my science, I am interested in birding, baking sourdough bread (I swear I began years before the pandemic, though hearing of people baking bread brings me joy no matter when they first began!), board games, roasting coffee, and self-hosting free and open source software. Over the course of the pandemic, I have learned how to maintain a basic suite of services on a server I rent that have replaced my need for Google Photos and Google Drive. I also transitioned my old, (and quite frankly, embarassingly slow) managed Wordpress site with this lean, static site made in Hugo that I host myself. I'm quite proud of my progress in this regard.
The future of this site.
On this site I plan to post updates about my journey through med school, grad school, and self-hosting I would like to share with the world. I have been helped immensely by many others' advice and I hope to impart similar tips to others someday. I suspect most posts will be about much lighter fare, like whatever hobbies tickle my fancy at the time.