Describe a problem in the Arab world that requires R&D to solve and describe the solution. You can get $2500. Excited to announce a technical essay contest called the sifr prize. Open to anyone anywhere. sifrprize.com

New pub from @ArcadiaScience 🧵 We found that C. smithii — a freshwater green alga — undergoes wild morphological transformations when grown on Marine Broth. Huge cells with mysterious wisp-like appendages. Here's what we saw. thestacks.org/publications... [1/9]

If anyone at #sfn25 near the poster floor has hand moisturizer that I could use I will name my second-born after you

We’ve been heads down @ArcadiaScience for a bit but the @arenabioworks news this week caused me to dump thoughts. hard things are hard; don’t be such a fucking hater. Reflections on parallels w our own institutional experiment here seemay.substack.com/p/big-experi...

Excellent post by the creator of the hoax FormatMyPaper.com. "We’re a community of experts, terrified of a harmless prank site, yet seemingly unbothered by the multi-billion dollar publishing industry that actually takes our copyright, our labor, and our intellectual property every single day."

Scientists themselves determine what is valued within science. Yet we act as if beholden to external managers, bean-counters who confuse the production of papers with scientific progress. We don't have to find better ways to navigate the prison of metrics-driven scientific assessment.

Ubadah Sabbagh is referring to closed-access for-profit publishing here, but I keep thinking about how perfectly it describes the general push to incorporate large language models into the scientific workflow in the interest of higher "productivity". ubadah.substack.com/p/beware-giv...

PSA: Many of you may have noticed a website floating around called formatmypaper(dot)com. People rightly noted something was fishy. I dig into what happened here: open.substack.com/pub/ubadah/p...

Woah just discovered this formatmypaper.com

If you've been hearing a lot about "AI Scientists" and wondered how much is real, how much is hype, and what's possible, so have I. So I spent some time thinking about it and this came out. open.substack.com/pub/ubadah/p...

excited about applying engineering + AI to frontier biology? we’re building tools @arcadiascience.com to help scientists move faster and smarter, and we’re hiring software engineers and applied ML engineers to join us. if that’s you, apply and let's talk:

This week, I continue my discussion with @ubadahsabbagh.com, Chief of Staff at Arcadia Science. We discuss his transition to industry, perspective on the state of academic research, and his visionary endeavors. www.podbean.com/eas/pb-3spkv...

folks, we’re hiring for scientist roles - lab tech - protein designer - molecular biologist - project scientist all onsite, all for creative people who believe in open science & wanna build cool shit. plus other stuff but that’s in the postings jobs.lever.co/arcadiascience @arcadiascience.com

>march 10 @arcadiascience.com announces new form of rapid publishing >apr 18 team reads a preprint, finds it interesting >9 work days later, team publishes results validating and extending model this is how science should be. open, rapid, with the community arcadia-science.github.io/2025-geno-ph...

And the artist, Audrey Bell! www.aebellillustration.com

Not only do we do cool science but we have a badass illustrator for our pubs

This made me cry and it really should not have. It is a document of basic decency. Good for Tufts, may the other institutions grow a spine too. www.tufts.edu/president/sp...

popped over to make sure its still there

This message is for immigrants — everyone from naturalized citizens to the “undocumented”— you may decide to do some things differently and that’s ok, smart even. Be gentle to yourself & remember that fear is the authoritarian’s greatest weapon.

prudent reminder for scientists today, from a thousand years ago

my tl is once again flooded with dead palestinian children killed by israeli bombs we pay for

fast forward two months later, i spent 10 hours today with a group of bay area investors, tech entrepreneurs, creatives, academics, lawyers, and scientists planning projects to develop education and tech sectors in syria. we’re cooking 💚

Whether from this indirects policy or some later thing, many labs will be shuttered. And I bet the first to go won't be those who mastered scientific theatrics & wasting taxpayer dollars, those skilled at prestige games and cronyism, or those rife with sexual harassment & abuse.

New job @arcadiascience.com! Ideally you've got a few years of experience post-PhD, in academia or elsewhere, and have some computational fluency in addition to experimental expertise. Added bonus, you'd get to join our pastry-fueled preprint comment parties like the one we're having today :)

Pleasure speaking with Katie @thetransmitter.bsky.social for her well researched story.

Academic scientists, I’m curious to hear what guidance (if any?) your institutions have offered re the disruption and uncertainty around NIH/NSF funding

“Relationships need repetition and structure to grow. They need rituals and habits.” www.theatlantic.com/family/archi...

Que fantástica iniciativa para promover el rigor científico y premiar a quienes no suelen ser reconocidos por hacer las cosas "bien", aunque hacerlo así no valga para promociones, ni de puntos en esa investigación "al peso" a la que nos estamos acostumbrando...

NINDS just launched a $50K prize competition for early-career scientists championing research rigor beyond their normal duties. Do you organize workshops, journal clubs, or do work to try and shift culture? This could be you. www.challenge.gov?challenge=ni...

When choosing a model organism, scientists often focus on a handful of species. But the tree of life offers much more, so how can we leverage it? Scientists @arcadiascience.com mapped 1 billion+ years of evolution and developed a rational approach anyone can use: doi.org/10.57844/arc...

this should be illegal

New Year’s resolutions to consider: More critical thinking in 2025. More dreaming in 2025. More skepticism in 2025. More disruption in 2025. More courage in the face of status quo in 2025.

Some things never change. 9th century landlord in Baghdad complaining his tenants might reduce the value of his property.

i’m the only passenger on this 737 for the next 5.5hrs AMA

I made atayef and I think I just invented the atayef cannoli???

#PubDrop! We've been experimenting with a more scientist-led approach to open publishing at @arcadiascience.com. After 6 months, here's what we've learned about putting researchers fully in charge of sharing their work… 🧵 1/8 research.arcadiascience.com/pub/result-e... 🧪#ScientificPublishing

The chokehold journals have on science is largely the choice of scientists. We can make different choices.

NIH just announced new public access policy. Publicly funded research should be freely available from *day one*. Zero embargo period. Begins December 31, 2025. www.nih.gov/about-nih/wh...

"Academia is not really collaborative. In industry, I have to collaborate with equals. In my first week after leaving Harvard, I sat down in a room with eight other executives, and for the first time, I was with eight other full-grown, working adults..." www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/01/harv...

Peer review - or rather our reverence for its current manifestation - costs us $10b a year directly and arguably more in delays to scientific progress. No discussion of its value can occur without balancing it against its cost.

Good morning to free Syrians everywhere 💚 Lots of work ahead but we all deserve this moment. From the Umayyad square in the heart of Damascus, joy.

Reminder that most things in science are as they are because we’re letting them be, as if the norms we have are some immutable laws that descended from mt olympus We literally can just imagine something better and choose it. We all have agency.

Federal *nondefense* R&D funding boosts worker productivity significantly more than defense or industry R&D, with returns of 140-210% on investment. Post-WWII data shows it drove 20% of productivity growth. www.aaas.org/news/researc...

Im in disbelief. The tyrannical dynasty that’s caused so many of us generations of pain, imprisoned and exiled my family, has ended. Hard to know what’s next in these conditions. But I’m relishing with my friends and family that we can, if only for a moment, finally breathe.

There should be an open repository - like bioRxiv, but much more casual - where people can document their failed projects that aren't worth the trouble of trying to publish. A massive graveyard of hypotheses with rich indexing, focusing on methodological choices. #neuroskyence #psychscisky #science

Reading and talking about science outside of my normal field is SO invigorating

academics love complaining about how busy they are but will send you 10-paragraph dms and argue in an endless thread

Stoked to be apart of @vox.com 2024 #FuturePerfect50 & even more stoked to talk about defining concepts for yourself, the myth of objectivity, a Sza tweet I live by and how annoying I find resiliency Big thanks to Celia Ford for one of my fav interviews ever 🖤

Let's give this a go on bsky...WE'RE HIRING! We have multiple really cool positions I'd love to see some creative and passionate people apply to (all PhDs): - Protein Designer - Protein Biochemist - Talent Recruiter #chemsky #bluesci #AIsky @arcadiascience.bsky.social jobs.lever.co/arcadiascience

On the topic of funding absurd research by NIH and other federal agencies, they funded scientists: - watching flies fuck - giving rats massages - spending years on why jellyfish glow - tracking penguin poop from space - using horseshoe crab blood