Watch the @mobilizecenter.bsky.social/Restore Center webinar with @aclouthier.bsky.social and Erin Lee entitled “Integrating Bone and Joint Geometry into Musculoskeletal Models” Research presentation: youtu.be/QtqDx3_uK9I Tutorial: youtu.be/wqxQl3Dm9lc

This ☝🏽 💯 If 🇨🇦 created a thriving research environment by investing in tri-council & ditching the PJT focused approach that kills investment in long term programs - we would ATTRACT international talent vs bribing them to move here; to only leave later when they see there’s no sustainable funding!

I can't* fathom why the top picture, and not the bottom picture, is the standard diagram for an autoencoder. The whole idea of an autoencoder is that you complete a round trip and seek cycle consistency—why lay out the network linearly?

“Everyone knows” what an autoencoder is… but there's an important complementary picture missing from most introductory material. In short: we emphasize how autoencoders are implemented—but not always what they represent (and some of the implications of that representation).🧵

We are starting to see some nuanced discussions of what it means to work with advanced AI in its current state In this case, GPT-5 Pro was able to do novel math, but only when guided by a math professor (though the paper also noted the speed of advance since GPT-4) The reflection is worth reading.

We're thrilled to introduce ATHENA: Automatically Tracking Hands Expertly with No Annotations – our open-source, Python-based toolbox for 3D markerless hand tracking! Paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10....

Oh so it does have phd level intelligence

Methods like NeRF and Gaussian Splats model the world as radioactive fog, rendered using alpha blending. This produces great results.. but are volumes the only way to get there?🤔 Our new SIGGRAPH'25 paper directly reconstructs surfaces without heuristics or regularizers.

Rest in peace, boss. @beierlab.bsky.social -- your stoic and positive support helped me in too many ways to count over the years.

What an absolutely extraordinary milestone. Congrats @fmrib-steve.bsky.social @fmrib-karla.bsky.social and everyone else involved. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I love this type of approach - for imaging, biomechanics, or other domains… Take high quality dense data, use physics simulators to generate synthetic sparse data, then train a model to recon dense data from sparse measurements. Lots of potential pitfalls, but the concept is immensely powerful.

White text on white background instructing LLMs to give positive reviews is apparently now common enough to show up in searches for boilerplate text.

We write papers, but we build people. You (yes, you, my fellow academic) too; please don’t forget that.

✨Some news✨: after finishing my postdoc, I’ll be starting my lab as an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech. Join us in Atlanta to study how joints work and where they come from!

Something big is coming up tomorrow. Watch this space… 💪🏻 ⚡️ ⚽️ 💪🏻🦵🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️👟🥋🏋🏻🚴‍♂️📈📊📚

Are there useful or interesting ways to use LLMs other than prompting them? I feel like compressing all the text in the world via a hierarchically structured statistical model is probably useful, but that we're using it in a way that is unlikely to do what we'd hope.

Since LLMs came out I’ve thought they are the perfect tool for systematic reviews. This is an excellent use case.

Are you interested in muscle #biomechanics and looking for #postdoc opportunities? If you have skills in (statistical) shape modelling, advanced data analyses or 3D imaging/model reconstructions, get in touch with me! I will be at #SEB2025 (Antwerp), #CNB2025 (Helsinki), and #ISB2025 (Stockholm).

Our Siemens 7T Collaboration Scientist is moving to support the Siemens 7T Terra.X Impulse at Stanford. Siemens is rehiring for our position, located in Canada's National Ultra-High Field MRI platform cfmm.uwo.ca in London, Ontario 🇨🇦. onehealthineers.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/SHSJB/job/OA...

MIT News today features a paper with fun examples coming out this summer by our brilliant PhD student Leticia Mattos Da Silva, postdoc—and Columbia professor in a matter of days!— @silviasellan.bsky.social, and PhD student collaborator Natalia Pacheco-Tallaj. news.mit.edu/2025/animati... Flubber!

Radiology: Artificial Intelligence has joined the rapidly growing #Bluesky social media network https://pubs.rsna.org/page/ai/blog/our_presence_on_bluesky#Bluesky@radiology-ai.bsky.social @cekahn.bsky.social #ESPR2025 #PedsRad #radiology

90% of doing science is being open to new ideas.

PhDone

Over the last few years we have been developing methods for markerless motion capture of biomechanics and getting them into the clinics, such as at @abilitylab.bsky.social. We are now developing foundation models from these large datasets and testing what this enables. Two recent preprints:

It pains me to say this, but if you are not a US citizen, you should not attend scientific conferences in the US, visit US institutions, or otherwise travel to our country. Right now it's not worth the risk. Hopefully that will change. If it doesn't, science in the US is sunk anyway.

Government spending on fundamental research is somewhat pointless (from the economic development perspective!) unless there are mechanisms to capture developments that could have commercial value in this country. We give away or license most of this outside 🇨🇦. That is a BIG problem.

"Thinking time —the time needed to concentrate without interruptions has always been central to scholarly work. It is essential to designing experiments, compiling data, assessing results, reviewing literature and, of course, writing. Yet, [it] is often undervalued." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I totally agree about writing being a tool for thinking - but LLMs have had the opposite effect on me. I write out my thoughts about something to them. In the process of describing the task at hand, I think about it more deeply and get much better insight. @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social

Trial of metformin for knee #osteoarthritis showed improvement in knee pain vs. placebo. What’s the mechanism? Curious to see what the weight loss differences were been groups. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

people need to internalize, very quickly, that federal research grants are a hypercompetitive contracting process not charity, and that what Uncle Sam gets in return for that money is American dominance in the future

"NIH funding is gone, so you should pivot to private foundations for funding" Meanwhile, private foundations:

It is a joy to congratulate @jessicagwagner.bsky.social, Movement Science PhD Student in UCSF PT, on a fantastic qualifying exam this morning - first one in the lab! Way to go, Jess 👏 Here is a link to Jess' recently published paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Just got news that @hhmi.org decided to not review Hanna Gray fellowship applications. I am sorry but that’s fucked up. People spent months working in those. So now you disadvantaged these candidates even more. They could have used the time to advance their research instead.

Hot takes/kind reminders a) “the bitter lesson”’s promise of scale did not deliver wrt AI reasoning & higher cog functions—O3 hallucinates 2x more than O1 b) prediction is not understanding, hallucinating is worse c) gen AI could help neuroAI but following latest AI trends is not a paradigm shift

We are recruiting a postdoc for an exciting multi-disciplinary project that explores the use of quantum sensors to measure muscle behaviour - looking for someone with skills in ultrasound, mocap, and EMG - funded by QLD Government's Quantum 2032 Challenge uq.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/uqcare...

In a recent podcast @dyamins.bsky.social argues: "We want to be able to use the model of the digital brain as a neurobiomedical discovery and diagnostic design platform." neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/buildin... - That view is popular and I believe that there is a fundamental logical error. Thread

I will be 49 in three months and just got asked whose lab I’m in. I still haven’t figured out a graceful way to reply! I usually have to repeat “my own” because ppl don’t seem to get what I mean. Does anyone have a clever reply that also emphasizes the assumption the person has made?

There is no aborted fetus debris in the MMR vaccine, or in any vaccine at all. It is worth noting that the Catholic Church, one of the most staunch anti-abortion organizations in the world, has a formal policy that encourages all vaccinations.

Excited to share the latest chapter of our work on fat-joint interorgan crosstalk in knee OA, featuring the role of complement factor D secreted by fat in knee pain. Link here: bit.ly/42Og5hJ Thanks to @farsh-g.bsky.social for all of your support - @thehopefulscie1.bsky.social and all coauthors!

Update on this one!!! They reversed this decision today www.npr.org/sections/sho...

“Recruiting U.S. scientists is a fine idea – except we’re barely supporting Canadian scientists as it is” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/aaa9fec50b2b595cc0291494fc97e4bd10e7d6945d5c457e0bfa75d42846a705/4FRDBEKLNFESVJ3ZILAS36KR7Y

🚨 We're hiring! Join @ifp.bsky.social’s metascience team to rethink how science gets funded and organized. Fellow & Senior Fellow roles open — $3K referral bonus if we hire your recommendation. Apply by May 11: ifp.org/come-work-wi...

I urge folks to sign this letter and share it with their university colleagues to get critical mass.

It's time to apply! We welcome applications for the @Radiology_AI Trainee Editorial Board from #radiology residents + fellows and from PhD students + postdocs in #AI related disciplines ➡️ rsna.org/education/tr... #MachineLearning #RadRes #DataScientist @rsnasky.bsky.social

Too many politicians in Canada seem to believe that scientific success is 100% about recruiting smart, capable people. That’s important, but it’s only part of it. Just because tomato plants flourish in the sun next door doesn’t mean you can grow transplanted tomatoes in depleted soil & full shade.

😃 A new article published in J Biomech by Godin et al suggest that for kinematics assessment of running, 16-352 steps are needed for spatio-temporal parameters, 16-400 steps for linear measurements, and 336-704 steps for non-linear measurements. 👀 buff.ly/ZdoVe50 #BiomechSky

Meanwhile, not one single word about scientific funding or encouraging R&D from any Canadian leader. Just pipelines, TFSAs and preserving manufacturing jobs. The latter is good, but what exactly are we going to manufacture?

"Vibe coding" doesn't work for research. Rigorous feedback with an LLM is amazing. If you code and are not using Cursor (etc.), try it! My code is now a conversation. AI helps draft a description, write tests, write code, code, and document it all.