We did it!* One of my teams designed and 3D printed a drinking water treatment plant! It's almost safe enough to drink? The mixing vessels leaked so we used beakers... so it wasn't worth disinfecting to drink. But coagulation, flocculation, and filtration were fantastic! *mostly. Leaky mess.

Two of my students interviewed a bunch of LGBTQ+ STEM dorks and put together "The Queer STEM Survival Guide" as a small zine! I hope to print a bunch for the local bookstores. Hope y'all enjoy! static1.squarespace.com/static/64567...

Hampshire College just announced our closure. I've only been here <2 years but absolutely love being here. I don't know if I am staying until the final closing in Dec 26 or this June 26. If you need a random wastewater/enviro engineer/bioinformatics person I am unexpectedly back on the job market!

Project Hail Mary was a lot of fun but please be prepared for a scene where he puts two tubes UNBALANCED in a centrifuge. I was horrified.

Voting NO on the DHS funding bill is the bare minimum. Backing Kristi Noem’s impeachment is the bare minimum. Holding law-breaking ICE agents legally accountable is the bare minimum. ICE is beyond reform. Abolish it.

Ava and I visiting “Woes Hollow” aka the tallest waterfall in the world. RIP innie Irving who died almost a year ago today. (It’s Awosting Falls in Minnewaska State Park If you don’t get the Severance references)

I really want ppl w/o Minneapolis connections to understand You might've heard that Mpls public schools went hybrid bc so many families are in hiding. Well, a coworker just told me that today, during his kid's hybrid class, a kid's apt building was raided onscreen *Everyone has stories like this*

We couldn‘t make it to the Times Sq protest today. What are the next NYC places to express opposition to the US coup in Venezuela? Feel free to also post anything happening in the Twin Cities (where most of my networks are) or anything especially good anywhere that can be a model. Horrific times.

A good, informative, and sobering interview. A tiny handful of powerful owners of things run so much, and that certainly includes the New York Times.

Extending application deadline to early January so still time to get your applications in! #DisabledInSTEM

How do you approach teaching courses to students outside your major? My students are often interested in plants, environmental science, medicine, chemistry etc. I am trying to piece together "why my class is still fun and important" within their multitudes of studies. I would love to hear from you!

I put “lab work” on my to do list 3 times this past week and kept scratching it off thinking it meant chemical analysis, dna extraction, helping a student project… instead of going to the lab to get my blood drawn.

omgosh the amount of students getting sick the last week of the semester.

Ava had a very good week running around campus @weratedogs.com

Big news: I’m writing a book!! I’ll be writing & illustrating a beginner’s guide to appreciating wildlife in cities/suburbs, & how all of us can make our neighborhoods better for those animals. Thank you to my book agent @ericsmithrocks.bsky.social & the folks at Storey for believing in this book!

lowkey disappointed that my holiday break read is only about mushrooms and not The Secret Life of FUNGI as advertised.

I can't wait to be able to run RT-qPCR in my lab!!! Eagerly awaiting my Pocket qPCR to arrive. I can finally use my 50k units of reverse transcriptase I got from Gene and Cell Technologies a few years ago. gaudi.ch/PocketPCR/in...

Before and after grocery shopping. I did NOT buy any potatoes. They were stolen.

Facilitation-competition tradeoffs structure microbial niches and nitrogen cycling www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #jcampubs

First preprint as a professor and it’s… not wastewater but bees?!?!?? Lovely collab with my colleague Dr. Jennifer VanWyk. the middle authors are all the undergrads who took my bioinformatics course last spring and analyzed novel data www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Seeing Hamilton in Hartford with my niece and nephew! We got the extra interactive version where the British set fire to the stage and force everyone to evacuate (we are all fine and the show quickly resumed)

Zara Weinberg passed away earlier this week. She joined my lab earlier this year when her postdoc lab formally closed. She was a brilliant scientist, supportive mentor, dear friend, avid music fan, rabid believer in public transit, open science champion, and above all just an amazing human.

Yes, some people's legacies are complicated. For example, Watson. After all, though he was racist, don't forget his other traits. For example, he was also sexist. And also anti-semitic. And a data / idea thief. So let's not forget all the different facets.

Zara Weinberg was a brilliant, loving, and beautiful woman. She inspired everyone who she interacted with, and always strived to make the world a better place for everyone. Tho the world is a little less bright today without her, her memory will always be a blessing. She was truly one of the best.

The Leading Edge Fellows gathered this week to celebrate Zara Weinberg, a beloved member of our community. Our 7th cohort of Leading Edge Fellows (2026) will be named in her honor. The Zara Weinberg Leading Edge Cohort application is now open! Due Feb 2. www.leadingedgesymposium.org/apply/

Trying to explain daylight saving to a hungry dog who doesn’t know why it’s not dinner time.

Had fun time giving a keynote to the upcoming LGBTQ chemical engineers at #AIChE!!!

We have to absolutely hammer this home: Science suffers without the values embedded in DEI 🧪

Your ability to eat should not depend on your productivity Your ability to get healthcare should not depend on your productivity Your ability to get housing should not depend on your productivity Saying “be more productive!” To those who are struggling devalues human life. It aids fascism.

Last week was water quality sampling but one overly enthusiastic member of the team kept messing up our turbidity measurements by splashing everywhere.

It's that time of year again... time for #DisabledInSTEM 2026 Mentorship applications! I'm so excited to be running this program for the sixth year and seeing the growth over the years! Mentee form: forms.gle/um5DvYnBi3tn... Mentor form: forms.gle/BvaxnQm8uhUR... Applications due December 5th!

One of these things is not like the others... I just wanted to be included in Farm Fest.

“were testing ammonia concentrations next week! samples will be from the campus reservoir and throughout the farm unless someone is brave enough to get us our nitrogen source from animal fertilizer aka urine!” ::unflinching student who takes care of our pigs” “Yup.” The dedication ::chefs kiss::

My student helped me modify Harpers urn! Now she can continue to growl at me!

first day of the semester. two classes and too many student project. What fun.

Finally got my dissertation artwork tattooed (art by @fsantoriello.bsky.social) They're super adorable, based on the Ramones and the colors are the seasons since my work was seasonal changed in wastewater microbiome (red-summer, orange-fall, blue-winter spring-green)

Is there another way to BLAST the entire NCBI-nr database using a server other than NCBI? I tried ENA browser SSS & it’s taking hours for a single protein. Broader question: are there contingency plans being made by international bioinformatics community in case NCBI is no longer supported?

Six 6️⃣ tips on communicating effectively with politicians. From @jacquelyngill.bsky.social some time ago.

$53.5M for Connecticut

"Alligator Alcatraz" is wrong and media should not use it. It's propaganda. Alcatraz held people convicted of crimes, particularly violent crimes. The Florida camp holds people *not* convicted of any crime. If they had been, they'd be in prison elsewhere. The site is a textbook concentration camp.

The good scritches.

just left a message to my senators to get their shit together and push back again the budget reconciliation bill. reminder for you to do the same.

There is no ceiling on how bad things can get until we make the ceiling. No institution will make it for us. As someone I used to organize with loved to say, “No one is coming to save us, but us” And yeah, it’s scary as fuck

holy smokes, house is on fire y'all 🚨🚨🚨

Well this is f’in sad #ASMicrobe

Ask your doctor what treatment the supreme court decided is right for you.

Protect Trans Scientists. cowritten with a lot of amazing people (I tagged those I could find but there are so many more incredible folks) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @thepunkscientist.bsky.social @jlw-ecoevo.bsky.social @bfrancescol.bsky.social @drsueishaq.bsky.social

Strawberry picking!!!

For non-scientists: the funding rate is somewhere between 7% to ~25% (rare) for NIH or NSF grants, depending on where you are applying. Grants are reviewed by a panel of peers who read the grants, score them, then debate the ratings for 1-2 days to rank them. It is INCREDIBLY competitive already.