I wish more people would understand that real progress and innovation lies in using everyone’s potential, not just the few…that is where the real strength lies. The question is always, who is really benefiting from the status quo…let’s follow the money, shall we?

Powerful conversation on Next Question with Katie Couric from September: The Real Reason DEI Programs Failed According to Civil Rights Icon Bryan Stevenson. www.youtube.com/watch?app=de....

How do GWAS and rare variant burden tests rank gene signals? In new work @nature.com with @hakha.bsky.social, @jkpritch.bsky.social, and our wonderful coauthors we find that the key factors are what we call Specificity, Length, and Luck! 🧬🧪🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If you've ever rolled your eyes about research claiming that complex traits (from chocolate preference to socioeconomic status) have simple genetic explanations, check out this great paper from @jbenning.bsky.social @jedidiahcarlson.com @oliviarxiv.bsky.social Ruth Shaw @arbelharpak.bsky.social 🧪🧬

A devastating set of decisions on the part of UC leadership to withdraw support from our nationally recognized postdoc program that prioritizes research excellence combined with addressing our university public service mission. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

The President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is one of the most coveted & prestigious positions for UC graduates. It gives a hiring incentive to campuses who hire recipients for a tenure track position. What a DAMN travesty. This is capitulation to Trump's demand letter & anti-diversity agenda.

And we have now progressed from data analysis to policy recommendations. I told her that we'd calculate the cash value of her candy haul, that I'd ask her to raid her piggy bank and donate 1/3 the candy cash value to a local food bank, and that I'd add on a 5X match.

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.

Why PROPEL? Hear directly from our scholars at the 5th Annual PROPEL Symposium!

as facilitating “the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers” is written directly into our mission and core to our values, so we withdrew our application.

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-... 🧵

How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities? Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation. 🧵(1/n) @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

"...researchers who invest time in their students tend to lead more-productive, more-collaborative groups and attract stronger future students than those who do not." "Time spent with the next generation of scientists is an investment." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🚨PhD opportunity at the intersection of computation & biology! 🖥️🧬🧪 Ready to tackle complex biological problems with cutting-edge tools? The BMI PhD program @UCSF trains future leaders in comp bio, bioinformatics, & data science. 📢 Info session: 11/6 @ 1 PM PT bmi.ucsf.edu/admissions Learn more👇

Building community! Finishing undergrad (or just finished) and interested in gaining research experience before applying to PhD programs and also want to be part of a group that cares about you? Join our next matchmaking event!! Jan 30th 9am - 1pm PT propelscholars.org/matchmaking-...

Looking for a start in science? National PROPEL will host faculty looking to hire full-time research technicians from 5 institutions on Jan 30th. Meet faculty with similar research interests in a series of 10 min interviews. More info at propelscholars.org/matchmaking-event

There are unprecedented challenges for science, calling for bold action and collective effort. Training the next generation of scientific leaders has never been more important. Join us as we grow National PROPEL to answer this call. Learn more: propelscholars.org @propelscholars.bsky.social 🧪🧬🖥️🧵

SINGER, our ARG inference method, is finally published and freely available online: doi.org/10.1038/s415... It was a long journey – 16 months from initial submission to acceptance. Is it just me, or has peer review gotten more arduous lately? 4+ rounds of review isn't so unusual these days...

I want to try something again at #ASHG25 this year: I'll block some time on Thursday and Friday afternoons to meet with trainees who would be interested to chat on any topic. I did this last year and it was great to meet a whole bunch of new people, at all career stages!

Excited to preprint our latest work (w/ Drew DeHaas, Zhibai Jia, Leo Speidel) on using ARGs for demographic inference. w/ applications using data from 1000 Genomes Project. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

There are unprecedented challenges for science, calling for bold action and collective effort. Training the next generation of scientific leaders has never been more important. Join us as we grow National PROPEL to answer this call. Learn more: propelscholars.org @propelscholars.bsky.social 🧪🧬🖥️🧵

Estimating the rate of quantitative trait evolution in the presence of gene tree discordance by calculating likelihoods across trees https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680724v1

Working link: academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

3/ We developed a systematic permutation approach that progressively scrambles features (LD, haplotype structure, allele frequencies) in haplotype matrices to see how each affects model performance.

🧵1/ Excited to share our new paper in Molecular Biology & Evolution! 👉 [https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf250] It started as a lab-meeting sanity check for another project — and ended up turning into a new way to interpret machine-learning models in population genomics.

🪦💀💔

Nooooo!!! Guess I didn’t completely close my water bottle in my backpack… good thing I have 27 minutes until my lecture begins to find a solution…. 😱

This is truly an incredible breakthrough IMO. Really exemplifies what you get when deep domain expertise (popgen/evolution/disease genetics in this case) fuses with cleverly crafted ML. What u get r sleek, well thought out architectures that absolutely destroy the behemoths. Wow!! 1/

We are excited to share GPN-Star, a cost-effective, biologically grounded genomic language modeling framework that achieves state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of variant effect prediction tasks relevant to human genetics. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (1/n)

Adaptations to water stress and pastoralism in the Turkana of northwest Kenya | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is really interesting! Mutations that affect a protein's foldability do not seem to impact org fitness if the protein is not important for function. But there *are* effects from mutations on those proteins (just not related to foldability). What are they due to?? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A project many years in the process, we’re pleased to present our work on multi-ancestry meta-analysis across a boatload of traits in the UK Biobank: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are excited to share our new preprint describing the inclusion of selection models to stdpopsim, our community-maintained library with an extensive catalog of population genetic models. 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🎉🎉🎉Shout out to Kaiser Permanente - they recently updated their website to say that they WILL be covering COVID-19 vaccines all of their members 6 months old and up!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉 Thank you KP - let's hope their announcement kicks off more like it kp.org/covidvaccine

some old conversation here: bsky.app/profile/rese...

So, has anyone heard if the NSF GRFP will be officially called off this year? www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo... still says "Program 24-591 is currently waiting for a new publication." Is it 💀 or 🧟 or about to be 🚀?? 🙏🏽

Excited to share our latest manuscript, "Exposure accumulation drives age-dependent disease architectures and polygenic risk scores," led by Xilin Jiang: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... I am attempting an explainer thread for the first time here: (I am usually too exhausted to post one)

Why do males and females often differ in traits? The expected answer: selection. But our new paper in GENETICS shows that genetic drift alone can generate sexual dimorphism — even when male & female optima are the same

Fellow academics: Have any of you heard about concerns regarding the use of NIH funds to support travel to trainee-focused conferences like SACNAS and ABRCMS (e.g. on an R25 where travel was budgeted)? I have heard indirect rumblings about concerns, but have not gotten any specifics. Thanks!

Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant is back. Share with your ESI colleagues! grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Few things send a chill down my spine faster than getting an “award modification” email… waiting for another 🥾 to drop…

SO THRILLED to welcome Dr. Miguel Guardado to the #newPhD club! 🎉 His exit talk was incredible, and his acknowledgements among the most impassioned I’ve heard. So proud of him and all he’s accomplished! Please read his words of hope—take up space! Progress takes us all. @scimiguel.bsky.social

ATTN: Robert Wood Johnson has money to support “canceled” research on racial-indigenous health equity www.rwjf.org/en/grants/ac...

I know many that can relate to this.... #RAdminsky #NIH #Research

Excited to share our new preprint for the tskit_arg_visualizer Python package! ARGs can sometimes feel like a black box, so @yanwong.bsky.social and I have been developing a method to programmatically drawing these graphs. 🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2508.03958 1/6

maybe chat-gpt can help us with "how to de-woke-ify giving a shit about other people" 🫠

Trying to wrangle highly scored but unfunded grants to fit within new NIH priorities, but in a way that will still be effective to achieve your goals and you are still excited about the work… hopefully we all find that comfort soon…

The Russ Vought administration has killed this program next year for funding young, talented, super-innovative scientists. Remember when Derek Thompson complained (naively) that NIH isn't high-risk enough? This is an example of how NIH was addressing that: launching programs to fund risky work. 1/