{"id":23473,"date":"2022-02-21T17:04:08","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T22:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/?p=23473"},"modified":"2022-02-22T16:05:14","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T21:05:14","slug":"marshall-professor-and-fellow-researcher-of-the-same-name-team-up-to-complete-research-publication-from-different-continents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/2022\/02\/marshall-professor-and-fellow-researcher-of-the-same-name-team-up-to-complete-research-publication-from-different-continents\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor and fellow researcher of the same name team up to complete research publication from different continents"},"content":{"rendered":"
It first sparked some confusion back in 1992, and it may be sparking some confusion to this day. Marshall University\u2019s Dr. Philippe Georgel (right), a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, has a colleague with the same name, doing research in his same field, but based at Universit\u00e9 de Strasbourg. They\u2019ve followed each other\u2019s work for 30 years. And finally, they\u2019ve teamed up for a project.<\/p>\n

Marshall\u2019s Georgel was at Oregon State University in the early 1990s, working on his Ph.D. in biochemistry and biophysics, when colleagues started asking him about some publications that had his name on them \u2014 and were even in his area of research \u2014 but were not his. Sure enough, there was another Philippe Georgel working in the same field. He, too, was French, only he continued, after a first sabbatical in California, to build his career in France, whereas Marshall\u2019s Georgel worked at several universities throughout the United States before landing at Marshall in Huntington, West Virginia, in 2002.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time we spoke was on the phone, when I decided to call him and see how we could differentiate each other. Middle initial was the first choice,\u201d Marshall\u2019s Georgel recalls. \u201cNeither one of us had one.\u201d<\/p>\n

His Ph.D. advisor at Oregon State, Dr. Ken van Holde, who was listening to the conversation, picked out a book and asked him to select a page number, line number, a word number and finally a letter within that word, Marshall\u2019s Georgel remembers. \u201cT\u201d was the final selection.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looked at me, stopped for a second, smiled, and went: \u2018T, T? Got it! Trouble.\u2019 So, \u2018Trouble\u2019 it was. I had been re-baptized by my scientific father.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two Dr. Philippe Georgels were made distinguishable by that made-up middle initial from then on. \u201cGeorgel\u201d is not even a common surname in France, said Marshall\u2019s Philippe T. Georgel, who hails from Poitou region, having been born in Niort and having studied in Poitiers. Strasbourg\u2019s Georgel is from the Alsace region, along the German border.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis specific last name is not particularly common, and the combination first name\/last name is definitely not as common as John Smith,\u201d explained Marshall\u2019s Georgel, who along with teaching and mentoring graduate and postdoctoral students, recently served as interim assistant vice president for research, director of Marshall\u2019s Cell Differentiation and Development Center and coordinator of the bioinformatics certificate program, among many other involvements at the university, including as Faculty Senate chair for two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe odds of two individuals of that same first and last name working in the same field at the same time, also looking for jobs in the same field and at the same time is very, very low,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The first time they connected over the phone, they joked about submitting a paper together, just for kicks. Finally, 30 years later, they made it happen. They identified their current scientific common ground and chose a topic that was comfortable for both.<\/p>\n

Strasbourg\u2019s Georgel was recently on sabbatical in Noum\u00e9a, New Caledonia, where he was investigating potential causes for a high propensity of gout in that part of the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was wondering if some specific aspects of nutrition could be contributing to individuals\u2019 sensitivity to develop gout,\u201d Marshall\u2019s Georgel explained. \u201cCertain types of food have been linked to gout, but we were interested in a better understanding of the molecular aspects of diet and their effect on expression of genes involved in gout. My own interest in investigating diet, cancer and epigenetics provided the second element of our collaborative manuscript.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe does have a solid understanding of epigenetics and I was interested in learning more about gout and inflammation, so our choice went for \u2018Diet, Gout and Epigenetics,\u2019\u201d Marshall\u2019s Georgel said. \u201cA few months later, we had a solid draft and were now trying to find a good match to publish it. The name of the authors\u2019 order did not really matter. My homonym put me first and him second and last by default, and both of us were corresponding authors, no favoritism allowed. Frontiers in Immunology ended up as our top choice for submission, and we were lucky enough to get our work accepted for publication in that journal.\u201d
\nTheir research can be found at https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fimmu.2021.752359\/full<\/a>, published in the fall of 2021.<\/p>\n

Since they\u2019ve gotten to know each other, they\u2019ve discovered even further commonalities. They\u2019re both runners and both love hiking. Also, \u201che did his postdoc on the West Coast in California, while I did my doctoral work in Oregon,\u201d Marshall\u2019s Georgel said. \u201cWe both liked the West Coast and enjoyed local hiking trails and the mountains. The Germanic wives\u2019 commonality was also highly unexpected.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am absolutely delighted that we ended doing what we planned on achieving nearly 30 years ago,\u201d Marshall\u2019s Georgel said. \u201cWe never gave up on the idea. It was just a matter of serendipity and availability. I am smiling at the concepts of the readers of this article checking the authors\u2019 list for an error, thinking, \u2018Why did they put the same name twice?\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It first sparked some confusion back in 1992, and it may be sparking some confusion to this day. Marshall University\u2019s Dr. Philippe Georgel, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, has a colleague with the same name, doing research in his same field, but based at Universit\u00e9 de Strasbourg. They\u2019ve followed each other\u2019s work for 30 years. And finally, they\u2019ve teamed up for a project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":23474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,45,46,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cos","category-featured","category-murc","category-news-releases"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23473"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23478,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23473\/revisions\/23478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}