On Oct 1, 2025, GISAID informed us that they had ended updates to the flat file of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences and associated metadata that we had used to update Nextstrain analyses since Feb 2020. GISAID's stated rationale was that their "resources are limited". 1/5

NEW: @CDCgov hit hard by massive firings that several staff describe to me as a “bloodbath.” Among those RIFd: —leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases; —leadership of global health center —leadership of the measles outbreak response; 1/4

In another display of incredible resilience, Ukrainian mathematicians in 2022(❗) opened a new International Centre for Mathematics in Ukraine (ICMU): icmu.ua/en It was pleasure to give an online mini-course on Bayesian Statistics to Ukrainian students and scientists: icmu.ua/en/events/in...

Russian soldiers proudly call their campaign to hunt Ukrainian civilians with the help of drones "human safari." Yes, you've read this correctly: deliberately hunting *civilians* using drones

Closing a Department of Statistics, in this day and age, is incredible and shortsighted. Please, read below. I encourage everyone from all over the world to submit their feedback here apc.unl.edu/fall-2025-bu...

Don't miss UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program if you are looking for postdoc opportunities: ppfp.ucop.edu/info/how-to-...

“University of California scientists helped create the Internet, wet suits, artificial intelligence and a lung therapy that has saved an untold number of premature newborns.” www.latimes.com/california/n...

In a new preprint we use deep learning on lineage trees to infer the functional form of the relationship between affinity and fitness that controls antibody evolution in germinal centers: arxiv.org/abs/2508.09871 🧵

Screenshot of cases from the U.S. CDC’s website showing the number of national measles cases indexed by rash onset date. Are they going down?

preliminary work from us on seroepidemiology of #Aedes borne disease in East #Ethiopia. Long story short - LOTS of exposure to #dengue and #chikungunya. There have been outbreaks, but looks endemic to me. More work needed on that. There might be Zika transmission too: : dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

✨ Looking to add something special to your decor? This is your last chance to order FREE Scientific Superhero posters for your home, office, university, or lab from CDC-INFO on Demand. The last day to order is August 15, 2025 before they shut things down. www.cdc.gov/advanced-mol...

The California Department of Public Health is pleased to invite abstract submissions for the 4th Annual Western States Modeling Symposium, to be held virtually on Wednesday, October 8, 2025, from 10am PT. Register: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...

That's us 🤓 @dmparker.bsky.social and company Special thanks to ‪@juemos.bsky.social (not a co-author, unfortunately for us), whose joke about our work in progress at the time (when we were prepping to apply for NSF PIPP II competition) inspired the title of the paper! 🚽

💔 www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/202...

Austrian Journal of Statistics has a special issue this year highlighting research in the Department of Probability, Statistics and Actuarial Mathematics at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv 🇺🇦 Legends like Gnedenko, Gikhman, and Skorokhod worked there www.ajs.or.at/index.php/aj...

BEAST X for Bayesian phylogenetic, phylogeographic and phylodynamic inference www.nature.com/articles/s41...

💜 LA

During Pride month, we're highlighting LGBTQ leaders in public health history. Alan Hart, born in 1890, was a physician, researcher, radiologist, and novelist. 🧵 1/3

What's happening in LA? Here's what I see. scienceforeveryone.science/p/a-quick-re...

I wrote a full response to this here, which explains why there remains a discrepancy between outgroup- and date-based rooting that still makes it impossible to reliably root the tree: academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

I am not an expert on the early SARS-CoV-2 evolution, but this looks like a thorough study. It is also important given a big splash @jbloomlab.bsky.social's recovered sequence analysis made back in 2021

Remarkable open letter to the director from NIH staff on the health, financial,academic freedom, and other impacts of changes at the agency. www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec...

🚨 A new rule would let career scientists like NSF/NIH program officers be replaced by political appointees Already 14,000+ public comments, deadline is Friday 📣 Comments can be short. Courts consider them—and scientists with NSF/NIH experience are especially impactful Speak up! shorturl.at/WKuBj

If you are frustrated with the Trump policy of coddling Russian war criminals, you can give a hand yourself. savelife.in.ua/en/

A cool article about what the US newspapers were writing about Ukraine 100 years ago. It is in Ukrainian, but with lots of screenshots in English. Mentions @timothysnyder.bsky.social of the 1910s who was writing about the rebirth of Ukraine as a nation. www.pravda.com.ua/articles/202...

My partner has a show opening today with Taymour Grahne Projects. Their social media person recorded this video. I love documenting his work in his studio for each show. I am glad this time it was done by a professional. You can see the show here: taymourgrahne.viewingrooms.com/viewing-room...

I am thrilled to share that I got elected as 2027 chair of the Section on Statistics and Data Science Education of the American Statistical Association. If you, like me, don't know how to write statements for such elections, you can read my blog post about it. www.datapedagogy.com/posts/2025-0...

How the NSF-funded GOLD program helped our master students learn data science skills Photo of students with yellow caps to celebrate their graduation from the GOLD data science program. How it started Around 2018, undergraduate students in the Biology and Chemistry departments of San Francisco…

Do you like situational awareness of infectious diseases (who doesn't). Do you like thinking about modelling with this aim in mind? Do you feel like its a bit of a niche and hard to find people to talk to about it? We have a forum: community.epinowcast.org for you.

A funny story for the immunologists. Today I attended a brilliant PhD defense involving B cells. Near the end of the Q&A session, a gotcha question came from the audience: "Do you know what the 'B' in 'B cell' refers to?" Groan, here it comes... 1/3

One of our student clubs came to interview me and asked about my hobbies 😻 www.instagram.com/p/DJDa_Ezpxr...

Very good recommendations here of Ukrainian literature in English.

🧪 UPDATE: NSF just opened itself even further to lawsuit. Yesterday, it doubled down on the false claim that its 1,000+ grant terminations are "not subject to appeal." See question 16 here, published Friday afternoon: www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p... A brief thread... 🧵

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Good people at @tochnyi.info are documenting war crimes that happen every day in Ukraine: russians are hunting Ukrainian civilians with drones

Looking forward to my visit @ccdd-hsph.bsky.social!

This exciting resolution from Rutgers University Senate is exactly the kind of model I think higher ed needs: a mutual defense pact of, in this case, Big 10 schools. They call for member institutions to create a joint defense fund and make resources available to any member institution under attack.

Meanwhile, 🇷🇺 piece seekers bomb schools and injure civilians, including children abcnews.go.com/Internationa...

🤔 how many journalists (from 🇺🇸, 🇺🇦, 🇪🇺, 🇬🇧, or 🇷🇺) are in the signal group chat about 🇺🇦 end of the war negotiations? There is very little doubt that this group chat exists, right?

An update on the war following a recent trip. The situation has improved compared with Fall 2024. Russian offensive momentum slowed significantly over the winter, though it is premature to claim that the front has stabilized, especially following AFU withdrawal in Kursk. /1

Russia has kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. Putin was indicted for this crime. Yale has a unit searching for them. Musk eliminated the funding. inews.co.uk/news/world/m...

Happy to share that my first solo-authored paper is now published in the Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application. 📑 Reproducibility in the Classroom 🔗 www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Ukraine has supplied the U.S. with extensive intelligence and vast amounts of data on Russian technology, captured equipment, battlefield operational guides, weapon performance, and countermeasures against US provided systems. A shame no one seems to remembers or appreciates it

Yet another autocrat is frustrated that it is proving to be very hard to subjugate Ukraine Ukrainians are very tired but keep fighting for their freedom 🇺🇦

President Trump likely sees little value in leveraging pressure against Putin and instead views forcing Ukraine into capitulation as the easiest path to achieve his goals. He shifts blame on Zelensky, portraying him as the obstacle to peace, to excuse his own failure to deliver on election promises