Privileged to join the ranks of EMBL Australia’s partner laboratories steering committee, representing @singmolsci.bsky.social, the EMBL Aus node in Single Molecule Science. Lots of new developments around the corner for this wonderful Medical & Life Sciences community in Australia.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you have to do something that makes you feel good…👇🏾 I recently chatted to someone about this; for me, during my time in academia, the people I met and what I learnt as we established @eartharxivbot.bsky.social was one of those things 😊

Fantastic piece in Nature Reviews Neuro by @nicolecrust.bsky.social on the importance of science communication. My take? Everything matters - just do something. It will make a difference for how science is valued and trusted, how community understands. Let's get out there and communicate! 👏

Does anyone have any info as to whether this affects *all* H-1Bs? Or just a subset?

This has to be the British politics equivalent of "Reject changes. Stop tracking" in academic writing. IYKYK. #AcademicSky

This has to be the British politics equivalent of "Reject changes. Stop tracking" in academic writing. IYKYK. #AcademicSky

Universities across Australia marking #RUOKDay this week. Bear in mind that it's not all OK, especially in institutions bearing down on mass job losses.

. #FreedomOfSpeech

"Structural inequality is so pernicious precisely because it is hidden behind a bland façade of emails left unanswered, ideas overlooked, invitations unextended or contributions in seminars or meetings shot down." wonkhe.com/blogs/we-all...

🤯 University pays $44m to consultants who advised laying off 400 staff in order to save $100m pa.

🤯 University pays $44m to consultants who advised laying off 400 staff in order to save $100m pa.

I would like to shout out the @rsc.org 'Horizon Prizes' here, which explicitly exist to recognise that hugely innovative work actually comes from the cumulative effort of teams - www.rsc.org/standards-an...

Happy to share a new preprint from the Clarke & Vallese (@fravallese.bsky.social) labs reporting #cryoem structures of two RBC stomatin complexes – with AQP1 & UT-B - continuing the SPFH theme from our recent vault preprint! This was a fun one and has been cooking for a while - read on for more! ⬇️

In the bookshop this morning: PARENTS: “Okay, we’re leaving now.” CHILD: *pulls another book from the shelf and sits down * CHILD: “Then I guess this is goodbye.”

You know sometimes people have regrets about choices they have made wrt careers? This year, I have felt that way.

Closing soon - an opportunity to come and work with me and my colleagues developing our new curriculum in cellular and molecular biophysics. 🧪 Applications close on the 24th of Aug, Aus EST.

Incredibly proud of this team of colleagues from my department, @singmolsci.bsky.social. Looks like it was so much fun on a sunny day in the park!

Incredibly proud of this team of colleagues from my department, @singmolsci.bsky.social. Looks like it was so much fun on a sunny day in the park!

Sobering article on the anti-immigration ideology driving layoffs of academic researchers & cutting off career pathways of ECRs. All because govts (even the so-called ‘progressive’ politicians) unashamedly scapegoating international students & university managers choosing profit over science. 🧪

UTS is going to axe 400 jobs. This is not solely the government’s fault, but it is yet another sign that the “Job-ready Graduates” package needs to be abolished. It punishes humanities students

This has made me think all day… no other industry does ‘cloak n’ dagger’ quite the way universities do redundancies. Some website ought to make a world ranking table for higher ed institutions for the million variations of theatrics and language used for gutting workplaces of talent.

Many of you in #AcademicBsky in the northern hemisphere might not know the dire state of Australian academia. This essay by Andrew Dean is a fair snapshot of the state of the sector. Thinking today especially of academics in some Aus unis facing mass job cuts ~ 3,000 jobs on the chopping block now.

Can’t feel prouder of people in this city on one of the worst weather days so far this year.

It's about time I announced a project that I've been working on in the last year... I wrote a book! 'Volcanoes: 10 things you should know' published by @orionbooks.bsky.social Seven Dials will be out in September. It's available to pre-order now. Links: linktr.ee/volcanologist

🚨Job Alert: My department in UNSW Sydney is recruiting a teaching-only Lecturer in Biophysics. The lecturer will play a key role in the pedagogical development and delivery of courses and practicals in the new undergraduate (BSc) major in #Biophysics that we are launching from 2026. #AcademicBsky 🧪

🚨Job Alert: My department in UNSW Sydney is recruiting a teaching-only Lecturer in Biophysics. The lecturer will play a key role in the pedagogical development and delivery of courses and practicals in the new undergraduate (BSc) major in #Biophysics that we are launching from 2026. #AcademicBsky 🧪

Essay mills shamelessly advertising on the academia feed. CC @keithwilson.eu

Congratulations to Tayla Shakespeare & Raj Seehra who passed their PhD defences over the past 2 weeks 👏 ! Both of them members of our lab in Sheffield, 2021-2025, developing & applying new methods in expansion microscopy 🔬. 📷 here together with postdoc Tom & technician Michael on the special day. 1/

Congratulations to Tayla Shakespeare & Raj Seehra who passed their PhD defences over the past 2 weeks 👏 ! Both of them members of our lab in Sheffield, 2021-2025, developing & applying new methods in expansion microscopy 🔬. 📷 here together with postdoc Tom & technician Michael on the special day. 1/

Today is International Non-Binary People's Day and the first day of Non-Binary Awareness Week The day was first celebrated in 2012, started by Katje van Loon. The date was chosen for being precisely midway between International Women's Day and International Men's Day.

Paging cell culture/microscopy peeps: does anyone have a favourite phone adaptor to take steady photos down the eyepiece? 🔬

A study on what many of us already know: over 75% of internal service work in academia is done by women. The bit that gets me:”The male associate professors in particular made it clear that they actively engaged in evasiveness and did not want to participate if it was not positive for their careers”

This 👇🏾. A different set of rules, expectations on women, and perceptions of workloads is all part of the hidden curriculum of academia. If all leaders/senior colleagues can do is tell women to learn to say ‘no’ rather than ditching the double standards, they are very much a part of the problem.

Advice needed from #AcademicBsky #ScienceBsky hivemind 🧪. One of my former students has pointed out that a collaborator from over 7 yrs ago, and from an institution that we since left, has published and misrepresented some data acquired by this student. Should I report, or open this 🥫 of 🪱s. 1/

Advice needed from #AcademicBsky #ScienceBsky hivemind 🧪. One of my former students has pointed out that a collaborator from over 7 yrs ago, and from an institution that we since left, has published and misrepresented some data acquired by this student. Should I report, or open this 🥫 of 🪱s. 1/

There are now 24 step-by-step guides, explaining how to create these ⬇️ data visualizations with R/ggplot2 - I hope this is a useful resource. Find them all here: joachimgoedhart.github.io/DataViz-prot...

FINALLY just released the @napari.org clusters-plotter 0.9.0 🤗 pypi.org/project/napa... The latest version comes with a complete overhaul of the entire codebase to make #microscopy data introspection and browsing even more accessible, intuitive and versatile! #bioimaging Let's have a look 👇🧪💻🔬

Fantastic demonstration of expansion microscopy in skillfully dissected human tissue structures. One more example proving what a versatile imaging method ExM is. 👇🏾

Fantastic demonstration of expansion microscopy in skillfully dissected human tissue structures. One more example proving what a versatile imaging method ExM is. 👇🏾

Jacinda Ardern’s book shapes up to be a cracking memoir and a fascinating lesson on leadership whilst under siege from trolls and thugs.

🧵. Prof Britton is on-point here about the hostile environment that was Twitter/X. Definitely useful for rallying support and raising awareness on important conversations, but also a magnet to hateful snowflakes who lurk behind faceless sock-puppet accounts. Don't let this platform become that.

What does it takes to reform the United Nations? 🤔 📚 I reflected on the perennial debates around UN reform for the recent forum on my @oxunipress.bsky.social book 'Inside the UN Security Council' published by @globalr2p.bsky.social. Here are my thoughts 👇

A group of Labour MPs, peers and supporters write: “We should legislate to root out DEI in hiring practices, sentencing decisions and wherever else we find it in our public bodies.” Devastated to see how quickly this has arrived in the UK mainstream. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

This is hardly surprising, the message that scientists should “stay in their lane” is just nonsense. Shifting research focus takes courage and sometimes necessary as times change. One make take a hit in citation metrics, but the broader impact as well as career longevity can be profound. 🧪

You know how some academic journals or institutions claim they have changed after a fallout on exclusionary behavior (let’s say, racism, sexism etc)? Sometimes, you just shouldn’t believe them. Today’s disappointment courtesy of angewandte chemie.

If your test for ground-breaking discoveries can’t detect the discovery of RNAi, or of CRISPR-Cas9, or the cryoEM resolution revolution or Alphafold2, maybe it’s not a very good test. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A picturesque photo from my parent’s backyard this morning, except that all that water isn’t usually there! They’re flooded in but the flood water is slowly starting to recede 😅

This👇💯. It's never been easy but it feels like a particularly brutal environment at the minute, especially for early career researchers. For every post sharing successes there are many, many more painful experiences (rejections of papers and grants etc) going unreported.

“We need to create real pathways to permanence, recognising mid-career scientists not as anomalies or exceptions, but as essential”. Having left academia mid-career to move into the private sector, I have strong feels about this article… #AcademicSky www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/im-tir...

The sacrifices academics make and how the employers value them. 👇🏾