David A Knowles

@davidaknowles.bsky.social

machine learning and functional/statistical genetics. Associate Prof @Columbia and Core Faculty @nygenome. he/him/his. https://daklab.github.io/

Alan's elegant work on evolutionary contrastive learning for understanding promoter regulatory logic out in @GeneticsGSA! academic.oup.com/genetics/art... Was really fun having him visit my lab for his sabbatical & work on this. New bucket list item: write a first-author paper as a PI!

Inferring fungal cis-regulatory networks from genome sequences via unsupervised and interpretable representation learning

Abstract. Gene expression patterns are determined to a large extent by transcription factor (TF) binding to noncoding regulatory regions in the genome. How

academic.oup.com

Excited to see this out www.nature.com/articles/s41...! Nonparametric kernel-based tests for spatially variable isoform usage in spatial transcriptomics. So many interesting examples in the CNS and cancer, we're only scratching the surface!

Mapping isoforms and regulatory mechanisms from spatial transcriptomics data with SPLISOSM - Nature Biotechnology

Differential isoform usage is identified with high statistical power from spatial transcriptomics data.

nature.com

I'm a longtime fan of Affinity Designer as an affordable Illustrator-killer for figures, and... it's now free?! www.canva.com/newsroom/new... Highly recommended if you're sick of paying Adobe $. Maybe Canva can buy NPG too and get rid of the OA fees.

Why we made Affinity free, and how we’ll keep it that way

We’ve made Affinity completely free, empowering professional designers with studio-grade creative software, supported by Canva’s sustainable ecosystem.

canva.com

Did you know that science labs work like small business entrepreneurs? Faculty hired on strength of ideas, get some startup $ to last 3-4 yrs. After that is grants- grants pay all our + our trainees’ salaries + scientific work. Funding in this country is frozen. That means scientific work stops

Wow. "NIH" canceled my co-mentored (with Dave Sulzer) PhD student's F31 funding. His work is on understanding the genetics and neuroscience of language learning disorders. F31 provides no indirect $ to Columbia, just pays his salary. Not that it should matter, but he's an American citizen. W.T.F.

Thinking back on all this I better understand the pain I feel to see science under devastating attack here. It’s not just about my livelihood or my university. It’s about my identity. And it’s about a pursuit that I see as standing along with art, literature, and music as among our highest callings.

It's been 3 weeks since Congestion Relief Zone tolling went into effect, and the program is working! We're seeing traffic move quicker into and within Manhattan, which benefits all New Yorkers—drivers, bus riders, emergency vehicle operators, pedestrians, and more.