Throughout your scientific career, you will read hundreds of dense manuscripts. 📚 As the literature stack piles up, remembering exactly where you saw a specific methodology or finding can be tough. Here is how I use a relational database to keep track of it all (and et al.). 👇

1. A bit of evolutionary biology. I'm really intrigued by a new perspective piece from Steve Frank that explores connections between how natural selection creates systems that generalize and recent work in machine learning about the surprising capabilities of massively overparameterized systems.

PhD position (Melbourne, Australia) Mechanistic modelling of the epidemic dynamics of vector-borne zoonotic diseases in Australia with Oliver Eales, Freya Shearer, Marya Potorek at University of Melbourne More details: http://iddjobs.org/jobs/2561

Calculations on the containment of Bundibugyo ebolavirus with @caseymiddleton.bsky.social: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6... We estimate: 1. Symptom screening misses 68%–86% of infected travelers. 2. A 7d post-travel quarantine misses 26% of infections. → 18%–23% missed by combined measures. 1/

Today's academic birthday gifts: ✨ Opinion piece rejected. 🏅 Tiny change required for resubmission of preprint. 🏆 Mandatory Disclosure of External Professional Activities due. Another day in paradise 🌴😎

6/ We eliminated measles 26 years ago. We eradicated New World Screwworm 60 years ago. Keeping diseases at bay requires sustained investment, trained people, and ongoing engagement.

Last night, we celebrated two birthdays: Cecil Earnest Middleton, born May 23, 1941 Casey Elaine Middleton, born June 4, 1996 Highly recommend celebrating your birthday with your granddad ✨

This is such a moving piece. If your interested in #Ebola — the damage it causes, the trauma families and communities and responders face during and after an outbreak — please read it. www.statnews.com/2026/05/20/e...

🚨 Disease modelers: Do you use empirical VE estimates interchangeably to inform vaccine effect parameters? Me too, and it’s distorting our predictions. VE estimates often do not align with model parameters. We discuss these pitfalls & solutions in our new preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2605.18571 🧵👇

My four year old: I do number maths. Adults do maths with letters they don’t know. Me: Actually, yes, they do! Him: Why don’t they know all the letters yet? I do.

Today's micro-feminist win: changed my email signature from Thanks so much, to Thanks, Please hold your applause 🏅

Claude has started refusing to give citations. Yes, this technically means fewer hallucinations. But it doesn’t mean that AI is now hallucination-free in the way a careful researcher is.

For years, Jay Bhattacharya has been upset at the MMWR for publishing findings that run contrary to his predetermined conclusions (e.g., on immunity after covid vaccination) and his political agenda. Now he's in a position to prevent those findings from being published.

"This is not reversing the damage. It is spending more than we spent on WHO to create an institution that’s unlikely to survive and will certainly accomplish only a fraction of what we did by working together with the entire world.” - Atul Gawande, @agawande.bsky.social 🎁 wapo.st/4tKRwyM

In a new preprint, we combine modeling with school-level vaccine data to contextualize the risk of 'breakthrough infections' and impacts on the ongoing US measles outbreak. #idsky #episky www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Models can be powerful tools to study associations in data. But do they reliably reveal the truth? 🚨 In our new study, @danlarremore.bsky.social and I show that the model used to estimate VE from test-negative designs (TNDs) may not translate to other correlates of risk. doi.org/10.1093/aje/...

If you live outside of Minneapolis but want to support the community, Lisa and her husband are doing boots on the ground work to protect families! Donate to their work via Venmo @lisa-szabo-1

Sometimes it feels really heavy to pretend everything is okay in our country and just keep doing research. It seems like the best thing I can do for my career is the worst thing I can do as a human being.

It really says something about the state of our country that I no longer believe banning LED headlights should be a top federal government policy priority… But I still hate them, to be clear 😑

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How can diagnostic tests for infection support public health – and what challenges do we need to overcome to maximize their potential? Kristin Nelson, Tyler Brown, and I have a new article out digging into this exciting, complex issue: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I have recently taken up watercolor as a relaxing after-work hobby. This piece captures a subtle sunset over the lake at my parents’ house in Tennessee!

6/ This is not a debate. That data is crystal clear. Since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, Australia’s buyback program and strict licensing have kept mass shootings to ~0–1 per year. The U.S. has about 400–650 mass shootings annually and over 46,000 gun deaths each year. It’s not even close.

The MIDAS Trainee Executive Committee is recruiting new members for 2026! 🤓 This is a great opportunity for grad students & postdocs in infectious disease modeling to gain experience organizing events & connect with peers. Applications are due by 9am ET on 1/1/2026, link in flyer & alt text.

Interdisciplinary scientists’ notes apps be like: - VEdirect vs VEtotal - d/dx(a^x) = ln(x) a^x - grocery list - to read: doi.org/… - how to exit vim

More than 75% of food crops depend on pollinating insects. What a striking cartoon to show the impact of dwindling insect populations 🐝

When they ask you to bring your talk on a flash drive, and you’re a professional, so you use your Tweety Bird flash drive #Epidemics10

We’ve just released Epistorm-Mix, a new open dataset on how people in the U.S. mix across ages and settings in the post-COVID era. 📊 Contact-level data + contact matrices Built for epidemic modeling & forecasting Fully open data & code 🔗 www.epistorm.org/data/epistor...

I've been on the road so I'm behind the times—but if you wanted to destroy US science, I can think of no more expedient action. Blatant unconstitutionality aside, fuck this backwards forwards and sideways. www.science.org/content/article/u-s-congress-considers-sweeping-ban-chinese-collaborations

Every fall, for the last 13 years, I have worked with CDC and WHO colleagues on a report in MMWR to update the estimates of the global burden of measles disease and mortality. This year we were already planning to publish in WER because of restrictions on communication between WHO and CDC.

1/ Hey, do you need some #goodnews? I know I do. Between the noise and the chaos, it helps to stop and remember what progress actually looks like. Here are four public health wins to give you some good news for the week 👇

Why, in this incredible world of technological advancements, are published inline equations still blurry? 😵‍💫

#Vaccines save babies! And they do it so well when we allocate resources to achieve high vaccination rates instead of meh vaccination rates 💉

1/ Today and tomorrow, #ACIP —the external body that sets vaccine policy—is holding a special session. One item on the agenda is the highly anticipated vote for the Covid vaccine. We’re expecting VAERS data to be misused to suggest 25 pediatric deaths were caused by the vaccine. Here are the facts👇

I am pretty sure I had COVID-19 earlier this month, but I tested negative (by RDT) on days 1 & 3 of infection. How do you satisfy your academic curiosities about what pathogen has infected you without spending tons of $$ on diagnostic tests?

I see news outlets reporting on falling ‘fertility rates,’ and I find this terminology non-intuitive… and potentially problematic. Falling fertility rates tell us about reductions in women’s birth rates, not reductions in women’s fertility! Let me explain:

Reason #2,946 to keep funding science: color mix undoification 🤯

Sang Woo (Daniel) Park and I are excited to share a new preprint, "Susceptible host dynamics explain pathogen resilience to perturbations" [1/8] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I don’t see enough people talking about how hard it is to search for this emoji 💁‍♀️ WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO SEARCH FOR PLEASE TELL ME

🧵1/N New study published in @jama.com on re-emergence of vaccine-eliminated infectious diseases under declining vaccination in the US. We model long-term risk and conditions for return to endemicity for measles, rubella, polio, & diphtheria. Collab w/ @Mathewkiang.com jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Interesting new pre-print on test-negative designs and implications for estimating correlates of protection: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

New commentary on pandemic surveillance and the need to have it be repeatable/continuous for updating, out in @pnas.org with Freya Shearer of Uni Melbourne: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A glimmer of good news amidst the chaos! On Monday, I successfully defended my PhD focused on infectious disease modeling. And yes, my thesis title is an acronym for my last name. With gratitude to the incredible friends and mentors who got me here… Dr. Casey Middleton, reporting for duty 🫡🦠

The cycle of dissertation writing: 1. Don’t sleep well 2. Too busy for nap 3. Drink afternoon coffee 🔁 Repeat

Dad from Kentucky: “We finally started feeding our baby raw milk and he has grown like crazy!” Me: “Oh. Aren’t you worried about bird flu?” KY Dad: “Well I know the farmer and I’ve met his cows.” Me: “….” Someone hire this man with his 🪄 diagnostic capabilities. He can detect H5N1 just by sight!

I’m getting tired of saying “this is so fucked up!” everyday.

In September in Geneva we applauded a major milestone in the effort to eradicate measles and rubella viruses from the face of the earth. Today an unvaccinated child has died of measles in the country where the vaccine was developed. This is not greatness.