At my institution, if you are a day late taking an online training module, there is no courtesy warning -- just an email straight to your boss (for me, Dept. Chair).

I heard the sad news on LI that Richard Scolyer passed away. He was a wonderful melanoma researcher and pathologist. He was a co-author on my first big paper in the field, describing the genomic landscape of desmoplastic melanoma. He was so kind and collaborative www.linkedin.com/posts/melano...

Visiting the National Cancer Institute with my colleague, Iwei Yeh, to learn about the cool science being carried out by the #HTAN project.

Apparently, my institution has a committee on committees, and they are seeking members. While I have a soft spot for service, I might pass on this one

☕ @shainlab.bsky.social , @bishaltandukar.bsky.social & co dissect the mutational, gene expression and morphological features of adult human skin melanocytes at single-cell resolution. bit.ly/4wzMyX0

Celebrating 4 oral presentations from our team at the Society of Investigative Dermatology Meeting in Chicago! Loes Hollestein @sharmaharsh.bsky.social Bárbara Rentroia Pacheco and myself with support from Arne Van Hoeck and Domenico Bellomo of SkylineDx BV. Look out for new prognostic tests in cSCC

Why is it so painful to update your CV?

STmut can now operate on Atera data from 10X Genomics. Here is a breast cancer that was profiled on the Atera platform

Excited to share our latest work from @shainlab.bsky.social lab, now out in Nature Cell Biology: “Somatic mutations distinguish melanocyte subpopulations in human skin.” We find evidence that melanocyte stem cell dynamics shape human skin homeostasis and UV response. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share that our paper, “Somatic mutations distinguish melanocyte subpopulations in human skin,” is now out in Nature Cell Biology. Reposting the thread below ⬇️

For the fourth time in my ~12 year editorial career I was able to accept (in principle) a paper after one round of review. 🥳

@marinelab.bsky.social rocks it in the opening plenary of #AACR26, describing how to harness cellular plasticity to combat minimal residual disease. And I love the shoutout to STmut! Congrats Chris on all your success.

Why does Dillon Brooks have the Wikipedia logo tattooed on his arm

Kicking off the the #AACR26 strong with a great lineup of speakers. Myself, Irene Ghobrial, Li Ding, and Indu Kohaar (left to right). #HTAN

Tumor promotion through the lens of evolution This review grew out of many long conversations, shared ideas, and lively discussions It has been a real pleasure to think together with Allan, Paul, Eve, and Abel about how tumours develop and how carcinogens shape cancer risk rdcu.be/fdC2J

When they are healthy, the Warriors are still a great team

Excited to share our latest work in Nature. Applying single-molecule and single-cell DNA sequencing methods, we uncover an extraordinary landscape of somatic mutations in immune checkpoint genes in autoimmune B cells, suggesting that somatic mutations may be key to autoimmunity [1/n] rdcu.be/fdqbr

I am looking forward to attending #AACR26. I will be chairing an educational session describing work done by the Human Tumor Atlas Network (HTAN) on Friday at 3pm.

Erica Schwartz is expected to be selected by the Trump administration to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pending approval from President Trump.

On route to the Final Four. Easiest packing for a trip ever. Let’s go Illini!

Here is my haul from the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) meeting. One of the higher yield exhibition halls of any meeting that I attend.

For the 2nd time in 3 years: Your Illinois Fighting Illini are going to the Elite 8!! I-L-L!

Once you get over the learning curve, ScienCV is not terrible. However, it is extremely inconvenient if you want to collaborate with people who do not routinely submit NIH grants, such as clinicians or foreign researchers.

Dead Pubmed, if I am 7th till last author on a manuscript, then it probably should not be the top hit when searching by "best match"

Is it still ok to bold your name on the biosketch, making it easier for reviewers to see where you are on an author list? And can you add asterisks to denote co-authorships? Or are edits not allowed after printing from ScienCV?

Very sad to hear of the passing today of our UCSF colleague Mike Bishop at the age of 90. A legendary and inspiring figure. He also led UCSF as Chancellor. Have a listen to his Nobel lecture. youtube.com/watch?v=CDv7...

The good and bad thing about bsky is that there’s no dog mRNA mania on here

Got a grant review back and the main concerns from reviewer 1 were exactly the same as what Chat GPT said. Maybe AI is really that good, but I am worried the tail is wagging the dog with reviewers parroting AI and not the other way around.

Snow in the San Francisco Bay Area. Pictured here is Mount Diablo

We are very happy to see our study finally appear online @nature.com! This has been work of nearly 10 years in collaboration with the National Institute of Genome Medicine 🇲🇽, the National Cancer Institute 🇲🇽, the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social and others ⬇️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Blue sky needs to improve its suggested accounts feature. Now that the starter packs have dried up, there is no easy way to find scientists with dozens to hundreds of followers. All my suggestions are for large media accounts.

I found the prime use for AI tools -- understanding tax law!

Grant rejections are a part of the job, but it is so painful to have a grant administratively rejected, especially for unspecified reasons. www.statnews.com/2026/02/11/n.... I feel for the poor students. This has happened to me three times (thread below)

Oncotarget has fallen hard! I remember when it first came out, it was popular journal, known for its quick review. It reached an impact factor of 6.7 in 2012. To put this in perspective, Cancer Research had an impact factor of 8 in that year. I just checked, and its IF is down 1.6!

Is the NIH welching on the new biosketch format? They still use a template from 2021 as an example biosketch. grants.nih.gov/grants-proce...

Grants should have page limits on letters of support. If you need more than 3 pages (1 page per letter x 3 letters), then maybe you should not be leading the grant.

I am just reading this paper, and it is absolutely wild. Tumor cells acquire mutations in mitochondria, and then transfer them to T-cells, and the mutant mitochondria drives dysfunction in the T-cells?! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Recent review from HTAN. Linghua Wang with a timely review on spatial omic technologies Cancer Cell. www.cell.com/cancer-cell/...

A new perspective is out by Kai Tan and Lichun Ma from the Human Tumor Atlas Network discussing the emerging concept of the cellular neighborhood. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Keaton Wagler with the best college basketball game of the year and ESPN doesn’t even have a picture.

A new preprint from the lab, with postdoc @deboraycb.bsky.social and collaborators @aidaandres.bsky.social and Tim Connallon: “Characterising the detectable and invisible fractions of genomic loci under balancing selection” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thinking about the soft money problem in science. My institution will send 100 emails to faculty list serves guilt tripping someone to volunteer to teach before offering a dime of compensation.

Reading the Mike Lauer interview. A very informative take from an insider on the state of NIH. www.statecraft.pub/p/whats-wron...

Likewise, Congressman Cole from Oklahoma is the chair of the overall House Appropriations committee. If you can, reach out to his office as well. It is noteworthy that OMB is willing to veto a bill over a minor-seeming NIH operational issue. This makes me think this is part of a bigger plan...

The Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis trade looked bad from the get-go for the Mavericks, and it is aging even worse.

I think I have reached the point in my career where I have reviewed more grants than I have had grants reviewed.