I’m deeply grateful for this opportunity (2 more years in Japan)! We continue pushing the boundaries, developing tardigrades (クマムシ, kumamushi) as a small but powerful emerging model organism: ss-f.org/en/news/ss-f...

Important reminder to all the #Worm25 🪱 people at Davis now!! Super-sized water bear 💧🐻 photo op 😉 @bohartmuseum.bsky.social

Have you ever given a conference talk to over 100 experts in your field...DIRECTLY AFTER doing a (conference excursion) mountain hike in 30C+ weather? I can now say I have.... !!! (Mt. Haguro, HIGH humidity, 2,446 stone steps...BEAUTIFUL but brutal before giving a talk 😂😅🙏🥹 I have been humbled !!)

Huge thanks to Benj Plackett & the @nature.com journalism team for featuring our tardigrade 🧠🔬🧬 work! Means so much as an early-career researcher building community + tools (neural atlas, GCaMP strain, behavior) now based in @gaou-ak.bsky.social Lab @ IAB Tsuruoka 🇯🇵 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

With all their complexity in a tiny transparent package, could tardigrades be a useful organism for neuroscientists to study as they unravel the many mysteries of the brain? @tardi-neuro.bsky.social thinks it’s time tardigrades have their moment! grassfoundation.org/time-for-tar...

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Big thanks to @thetransmitter.bsky.social for the great writeup & helping 📢 tardigrades step up systems neuroscience! 🧠 These tiny creatures are ready to walk us toward new insights in whole-animal neuro. Excited to keep building tools & a supportive community for💧🐻! It's been my life's work 😍

Grateful for my (very snowy) new scientific homebase 🤍❄️🇯🇵 and all the amazing colleagues @ Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University 慶應義塾大学先端生命科学研究所 ...stay tuned for tardigrade クマムシ content on overdrive 🔬

It's also Black History Month and "Black" was among those words allegedly flagged. We cannot erase our colleagues, community, and their experiences, invaluable perspectives, and contributions.

We love all aquatic eight-legged wonders of the world 🐙🌊🤝💧🐻 ...plus an amazing scientist and speaker !!

Folks who can’t be out and about, volunteer opportunity:

National Science Foundation suspends salary payments, leaving researchers unable to pay their bills www.statnews.com/2025/01/30/t... Story by @ericboodman.bsky.social

To expand on this, right now ~200 postdoc fellows directly funded by NSF are locked out of their salary &research funds right before the first of the month. No doubt other NSF funded grads &postdocs are affected as well. All requests for funds put in before the freeze are slowly being cancelled

Happening today! (In 20 min!) Register for Free 🧠

Perfect for the upcoming C. elegans meeting at Davis—come for the worms, stay for the sofa-sized stunner! 🛋️ Epic lab photo opportunity here! 📸

Hello 🦋 world, Posted a preprint this week, advocating tardigrades as a new model for systems-level neuroscience! 🧠🐻💧 Synthesizing physiology, neuroanatomy, genomics & behavior was no small feat—feedback is welcome with all 8 arms! 💌 My email for contact is on the PDF 🌟 arxiv.org/abs/2501.06606