My privilege to share some lovely stories from the science community about what Sam Neill's timeless performance as Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park meant to them—and why it will continue to inspire kids to chase their own discoveries for years to come.

Sam Neill Inspired a Generation of Scientists

The actor, who died at age 78 on Monday, embodied a passionate approach to research and positive masculinity in his role as paleontologist Alan Grant in the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park.

wired.com

Check out this awesome work on reassortment in Hantaviruses headed by @ricardoriveroh.bsky.social and @punkrockscience.bsky.social. Great privilege to be involved!

Steph N. Seifert, PhD@stephseifertphd.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🚨 Ever wonder why some viral reassortants establish and spread while others disappear? Us too! Led by @ricardoriveroh.bsky.social, we studied drivers of viral reassortment across hantaviruses and found that it varies dramatically among lineages (1/3) Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...

In collaboration with Nicola Muller, and led by @lambod50.bsky.social, we have a new preprint out that's all about reassortment! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Using TargetedBeast, we built massive (9000 tips!) Bayesian phylogenies of North American H5Nx viruses, and inferred the host...

Check out the preprint of a project I had the pleasure of working on with Nicola Mueller and Louise Moncla on North American H5 reassortment! Feel free to reach out with questions or thoughts!

bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Frequent seasonal reassortment between high and low path viruses drives the diversification of influenza A/H5N1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.17.719307v1

Amidst all the craziness in the world it's great to see folks like Dr. Legall providing critical perspectives on microbiology and the state of science. Please consider subscribing! substack.com/@noahlegall?...

Noah Legall | Substack

I write about Bioinformatics and Microbiology. Follow along as I develop these ideas using AI/ML

substack.com

Our paper on the Genomic Epidemiology of DENV2/3 in Colombia and the Americas is finally out @cp-cellreports.bsky.social, check it out: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Big thanks to my collaborators @lambod50.bsky.social, @viralverity.bsky.social, @nathangrubaugh.bsky.social, and many others!

Genomic epidemiology of dengue virus 2 and 3 reveals repeated introductions and exportations of several lineages in Colombia

Dengue fever, a major mosquito-borne viral disease, is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes and poses a significant global health burden. Despite extensive…

sciencedirect.com

Ricardo Rivero H. 💻🧬@ricardoriveroh.bsky.social · 12mo ago

It’s my pleasure to share our new preprint, which I had the opportunity to lead, and which has been in the making since 2022. In this work, we used climate data, phylogeography, and antigenic profiling to uncover the dynamics of DENV spread in Colombia. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

What makes bird flu spill over to humans? 4y funded PhD in the genomics and molecular virology behind zoonosis of avian influenza A virus, working with @tompeacock.bsky.social and others between Liverpool, Pirbright, and Uppsala! open to applications until next week!

Our lab's paper describing the North American H5N1 epizootic is out now in Nature! So thrilled to have this out, and congratulations to @lambod50.bsky.social for all the fantastic work on this: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ecology and spread of the North American H5N1 epizootic - Nature

The panzootic of highly pathogenic H5N1 since 2021 was driven by around nine introductions into the Atlantic and Pacific flyways, followed by rapid dissemination through wild migratory birds, primaril...

nature.com

Our lab's first paper is out! Led by Jordan Ort, we developed NextClade datasets that enable rapid H5 clade assignment via NextClade. We deployed these during the start of the H5 cattle outbreak, and we finally published the paper in Virus Evolution academic.oup.com/ve/article/1...

Development of avian influenza A(H5) virus datasets for Nextclade enables rapid and accurate clade assignment

Abstract. The 2022 panzootic of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5) viruses has led to unprecedented transmission to multiple mammalian species.

academic.oup.com

Check out this cool preprint on Dengue epidemiology in Colombia! It was a pleasure to work with Ricardo on some of these interesting phylodynamic analyses!

Ricardo Rivero H. 💻🧬@ricardoriveroh.bsky.social · 12mo ago

It’s my pleasure to share our new preprint, which I had the opportunity to lead, and which has been in the making since 2022. In this work, we used climate data, phylogeography, and antigenic profiling to uncover the dynamics of DENV spread in Colombia. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Important work from Tavis Anderson and our Penn-CEIRR USDA colleagues: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Emergence and interstate spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) in dairy cattle in the United States

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses cross species barriers and have the potential to cause pandemics. In North America, HPAI A(H5N1) viruses related to the goose/Guangdong 2.3.4.4b hemagg...

science.org

U.S. citizen interested in grad studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (Canada)? Grad programs are re-opening applications of US programs for one week. With expedited decisions. U.S. Applicant Week: www.grad.ubc.ca/us-applicant... #AcademicChatter #Canada #GradSchool

A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die. Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.

Please watch. Powerful and chilling. 1: ‘Do not obey in advance.’ 20: ‘Be as courageous as you can!’

Timothy Snyder@timothysnyder.bsky.social · last yr.

Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century." snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-les...

1/3 How long do you think it takes for highly pathogenic avian flu H5N1 sequences to be uploaded to GISAID after collection? How long should it be? In this commentary, we find a median delay of 228 days, with half the countries taking more than 6 months. rdcu.be/eeZGU @naturebiotech.bsky.social

Lengthy delays in H5N1 genome submissions to GISAID

Nature Biotechnology - Lengthy delays in H5N1 genome submissions to GISAID

rdcu.be

I'm hopping on the market for postdocs outside the US... ...as soon as I finish some new analyses for a manuscript. Lmk if there are any good leads! I've been collecting random ones here and there, but it's more daunting now that my home country appears to be off the table.

In study led by @ckikawa.bsky.social & Andrea Loes, we use new assay to measure ~10,000 neutralization titers to recent influenza strains & show titers correlate w evolutionary success of viral strains Similar data could help forecast evolution for vaccine selection www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

High-throughput neutralization measurements correlate strongly with evolutionary success of human influenza strains

Human influenza viruses rapidly acquire mutations in their hemagglutinin (HA) protein that erode neutralization by antibodies from prior exposures. Here, we use a sequencing-based assay to measure neu...

biorxiv.org

Postdoc Opportunity Got a PhD in disease evolution, or something similarly hardcore? Know your way around phylodynamics? Good. We need you. If you’re up for real-world research getting hands-on with fieldwork, sequencing, and making sense of viral evolution, apply here: jobs.inrae.fr/en/ot-25456.

Today @natmedicine.bsky.social published our study showing the older individuals born prior to 1968 have more antibodies that cross-react to #H5N1 relative to younger individuals. If H5N1 causes a pandemic, children will likely be the most susceptible. 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Immune history shapes human antibody responses to H5N1 influenza viruses - Nature Medicine

H5N1 strain-specific antibodies are higher in older individuals and correlate more with birth year than with age, suggesting that younger individuals are potentially more likely to benefit from H5N1 v...

nature.com

Highly suggest folks read up about Lysenkosism because it feels like that is where we are heading.

Alexander Tin@alexander-a-tin.bsky.social · last yr.

But University of Georgia's Daniel Perez told us that another idea floated by officials was more likely to result in dangerous bird flu mutations Kennedy talked about "the possibility of letting it run through the flock" and preserving birds that are immune www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-...

Check out some really cool work on canine influenza that was just published! Awesome collaborative team and looking forward to learning more about this very understudied pathogen!

Brian Wasik@brianrwasik.bsky.social · last yr.

For something different... Happy to report the accepted version of our manuscript on H3N2 Canine Influenza Virus (CIV) in US dogs over the past 20 years, at Epidemiology & Infection (Cambridge). #influenza #virology www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Timely work on data integration for flu spillover prediction from @haileyrobertson.bsky.social and collaborators: "Understanding ecological systems using knowledge graphs: an application to highly pathogenic avian influenza" 🔓 academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

stopover duration of waterfowl predicts HPAI infection probability in backyard poultry from waterfowl, but ttiming has no effect. virulence and immunity impact the transmission risk to backyard poultry. 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New research alert! 🚨 Our paper describing the first evidence of the novel H18N12 Flu in Albiventris bats is out in @natureportfolio.nature.com Scientific Reports. Huge shoutout to my friend and colleague Daniel for leading this work. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Genomics of novel influenza A virus (H18N12) in bats, Caribe Colombia - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Genomics of novel influenza A virus (H18N12) in bats, Caribe Colombia

nature.com

New paper led by Rohan Simkin exploring global patterns of zoonotic hosts in the wildland-urban interface. WUIs are a complex and expanding contact zone with many potential host species that are likely to be consequential for spillover transmission on a rapidly urbanizing planet. bit.ly/WUI-zdx

Zoonotic Host Richness in the Global Wildland–Urban Interface

In the wildland–urban interface (WUI), where human settlements abut or intermix with wildlands, people may encounter animals that host zoonotic pathogens, which can spillover to cause human disease. ...

bit.ly

Preprint out by me, Greg Albery, Barbara Han (@bahanbug.bsky.social ), and Amy Sweeny about how coinfection dynamics affect our ability to measure parasite/pathogen diversity. This research was funded by @viralemergence.org. ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... 🧪🧵(1/4)

We get data *from* the WHO. Without this, we're flying blind with data regarding evolution of infectious agents globally, putting us behind if we need to develop vaccines & treatments, just for one aspect. This puts the whole country at risk.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 2y ago

ATLANTA (AP) — US public health officials have been told to stop working with the World Health Organization, effective immediately.

Call your senators! Do it today! It's better than wallowing

Very excited to see this paper out in the world. Absolutely monumental effort by @gorkalasso.bsky.social et al. to predict which filoviruses are likely to infect which bat species. Check out the thread below for details!

Gorka Lasso@gorkalasso.bsky.social · 2y ago

Exciting news! Our collaborative study reveals the molecular secrets of how #filoviruses, like #Ebola virus, interact with their #receptor and enter host cells. We also predict #bat species that could act as hosts for Ebola virus. Check it out: https://buff.ly/4akxlP1 1/10

🚨😷🧪 NEW: A growing body of evidence shows that pandemics, biodiversity loss, and climate change are part of a broader polycrisis - but there are no simple solutions. A sweeping overview of "Pathogens and planetary change" for the first issue of @natrevbiodiv.bsky.social, out now 🔓 rdcu.be/d6lHl