Hey network, I am looking for a funding scheme that would support community-building initiatives, think of hakathon / retreat / two-three days of activity. Any ideas on possible funders? @optica.org @spie.org any program you can point me to?

“A speeding driver killed my parents - there needs to be a cultural change” www.bbc.com/news/article...

✨ #IchBinHanna Wrapped ✨das waren Deine abgelehnten Drittmittelanträge ✨so viele Überstunden hast Du gemacht ✨Deine Top 3 der Momente in denen Deine Arbeit nicht wertgeschätzt wurde ✨schlimmstes Berufungsportal 2025 ✨so oft hast Du Dich erfolglos beworben ✨Dein meistgehasstes Gesetz: #WissZeitVG

Hey #bochum and #Ruhrgebiet , tomorrow @scienceslam.de takes over the stage of Schauschpielhaus Bochum! Five speakers, five topics, five talks, yours truly among them. Some tickets are still available, if you can make it - come nerd out together ;) Event link: www.science-slam.com/termine/boch...

I am begging people to *please* stop using these tools to make a point or make fun of them. We do not need to further refine them or kill the planet to make a point. We should stop using them to make them irrelevant.

An excerpt from the “Should I Use an LLM?” section of my syllabi. 🎢

TGIF - Ein Glück, es ist Freitag! Ich versuche mir den Freitag weitestgehend freizuhalten, denn der steht im Fokus für: Stress-Management & Produktivität Heute bin ich im homeoffice und habe außer ein paar kurzen online meetings nun die Zeit, selbstbestimmt meinen Tag zu verbringen.

🧵 Thread👇 Heute Nachmittag im Fokus: Wissenschaftliche Karrierewege An der Uni wird oft nur das Karriereziel Professur diskutiert, aber der Weg dahin ist schwer, wenig planbar und die anderen Berufsoptionen sehr vielfältig (und zumeist sogar besser).

JAMA study: NIH grant terminations disrupted 3.5% of active clinical trials, affecting over 74,000 patients and resulting in a $1.81 billion funding loss. More than 115 active cancer trials were disrupted. www.ajmc.com/view/nih-gra...

Nervenzusammenbruch aber als Ausdauersport

In the age of AI slop, true expertise is even more important to value. Experts are the people who get so annoyed about the precise way to describe something they dedicate their lives to it (see excellent blog: www.experimental-history.com/p/thank-you-...). We need them and their journals. 7.2/n

At risk of flogging a dead horse: this whole letter is a reminder that the creative process is an end in and of itself, and vital to self-actualisation. You can’t experience BECOMING, as he puts it, by outsourcing it to ChatGPT.

What a list!

Optimismus ist, wenn man einen Kalender für 2026 kauft.

I try once again! 💡 🧪

I haven't posted about it here yet, but actually applications for our MSc Programme Lasers and Photonics at @ruhr-uni-bochum.de Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology are open until 15.11! Directly to application portal: lap-application.rub.de More info: www.lap.rub.de 💡🧪

Oh FFS. Because what overburdened peer review systems really need is more noise between the reviewers & ACs. Yeah, that's the ticket. aaai.org/aaai-launche... >>

The future of peer review is here. Introducing Nature Instant! We've automated rejection so you can get disappointed faster. Because why wait 6 months for reviewer 2 when you can get roasted by an #AI in seconds? Here is how it works. #AI4Science #PeerReview #FictionScience #FiSci #AAAI #ScAISci

It seems very in a bit of low of activity here, and Photonics feed recently is mainly announcements💡 Hey, forces of light, how are you all coping?

Planmäßige Zugtrennung aber außergewöhnlich im Köln

Ich mag meinen Beruf echt gerne, aber ist natürlich nicht alles Friede Freude Eierkuchen, mit vielen strukturellen Problemen. zB geht die Chance in der Wissenschaft beschäftigt zu bleiben mit dem Alter rapide bergab. #IchBinHanna www.datenportal.bmbf.de/portal/de/gr...

Dieser wissenschaftliche Nachwuchs ist etwas rausegewachsen #IchbinHanna

hey photonics people 💡🔬, is anyone in Munich next week? @optica.org @spie.org

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Sieht aus wie eine Koralle, aber es ist tatsächlich eine Gehirnzelle, ein Neuron. Das ist eine 3D-gedruckte Purkinje-Zelle, die man im Kleinhirn einer Ratte gefunden hat. (natürlich ist die in Wirklichkeit kleiner und nicht blau 🙂)

Oh, finally, a good duration for a postdoc contract

I count 55 emails back and forth between 8 people to make a simple computer purchase. 35 of those emails concern a $30 difference in price because of a backorder. When people talk about inefficiencies in academia, it's because the MBAs enforce auditing as control rather than letting people work.

If you burn down a forest, you don't miss out on lumber for just that season. You have to replant all the trees, nurture them, and wait for them to grow. The science and research budget cuts happening now are wanton, senseless arson. Recovery, if it ever happens, will take generations.

Inkscape plugin to rescale figures without distorting the text, and other useful features! github.com/burghoff/Sci...

[Admin] Von Mikrotechnik und Ultrakurzpulslasern! Sandra Stroj ist jetzt bei Real Scientists DE! Begrüßt unsere neue Kuratorin @sstroj.bsky.social‬! realscientistsde.blogspot.com/2025/06/von-...

Dieses „Freizeit“, das ist, wenn man spült, die Waschmaschine ein- & ausräumt, einkaufen geht, sich Essen zubereitet, putzt, aufräumt usw., und für das die Zeit ständig zu knapp ist, richtig?

1. Pull myself into a crunch 2. Hate it here passionately 3. Repeat!

A three-year-old brought me a bit of black paper. "Look", she said, "I found a piece of night!" We're all born poets, but slowly we forget.

#PhysicsFactlet Wavefront Shaping is a family of techniques used to control light (or, more generally, a wave) propagating through a scattering medium. A 🧵 1/ 🧪⚛️🎢💡

Do I take this thread and show it to students we discuss AI with? 🤔 Absolutely. What an ouch, a soul lost, tremendous amount of confusion out of nothing and useless suffering, what a "great" result.

one of my fav medieval weapons expert on the internet is on this app and I am so excited, everyone with even a passing interest in the subject should follow this guy

Wir freuen uns mit Alfred Ludwig und Martin R. Hofmann: Die beiden Forscher wurden in die Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste NRW aufgenommen – für ihre Spitzenforschung zu neuartigen Materialien und energieeffizienter Datenübertragung.

📢 Calling PhD students 📢 we want to hear from you! Help shape the future of PhD education. Take our survey to tell us all about your experiences https://go.nature.com/42ZB3vq

One of my favorite old twitter scientist threads was the “who has a cool science tattoo?” thread. There’s so many new scientists here now, I think we have critical mass. Post your science tattoo! Here’s mine:

I think about this comic at least once a week

A great group by F Cichos in Leipzig 🇩🇪 is looking for a motivated PhD student to work on novel techniques in thermofluidics incl. manipulation w #plasmonics 🌕, #qdots, and #ML A collaboration between @unileipzig.bsky.social @princetonupress.bsky.social @illinoispress.bsky.social Apply here 👇

I sometimes wonder, whether some posts are being visible at all... One more week to go! 👇

This is what I put in my syllabus. Best I can do for now.

#fNIRS has the best terminology out there: yay photon banana!

Hey Photonics folks 💡 🔬 if you know someone looking for a Master of Science Program to join, ours "Lasers and Photonics" accepts applications for one more week* *Non-EU deadline: May 15th EU-deadline: July 15th More info: www.lap.rub.de Directly to application portal: www.lap-application.rub.de

This applies to science communication as well: you can't expect people to comb through information over abundance to find your awesome stuff #SciComm

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Prof. Bender lists below some examples of what might have been LLM use cases, that is if LLMs outputs were adequate...

Happy birthday to the Hubble Space Telescope, launched from the Kennedy Space Center #OTD in 1990. Here's to a remarkable 35 years of imaging the Cosmos. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️ Leave your favorite Hubble images in the replies!