Richard Neher

@neher.io

The world of influenza science has lost one of its giants. Nancy Cox, who led #CDC's flu division for years & worked assiduously to improve global flu surveillance, died Thursday. I learned a ton from Nancy Cox. RIP. www.statnews.com/2026/04/25/n...

Nancy Cox, a CDC veteran and a stalwart in global flu research, dies at 77

Nancy Cox, a CDC veteran who for decades was a global leader in influenza research, has died at 77.

statnews.com

Tonight in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square, a sea of young Hungarians—who’ve only ever known Orbán’s corrupt, suffocating regime—are packed together, singing, chanting, and daring to dream of freedom again. Their hope is raw, their courage is real. The heart of Europe is beating in Budapest tonight. 🇭🇺❤️🇪🇺

American and Israeli missiles hit Sharif University in Tehran tonight. Often called #Iran’s MIT, the institution has been home to some of the country’s best and brightest minds in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics since 1966. 1/2

“[P]utting data into GISAID is like dropping it in a mail slot in an unmarked building,” says @colincarlson.bsky.social. “It’s wonderful that there’s so much cool stuff in that building. It would be great if we knew who owned it, or who paid for it, or what they plan to do with it.” #IDsky 🧪

Fresh conflicts erupt around giant database for flu and COVID-19 sequences

Critics say “autocratic” behavior by GISAID could hamper response to a future pandemic

science.org

🚨Preprint alert - this is a big one! We transfer the revolutionary power of TnSeq to bacteriophages. Our HIDEN-SEQ links the "dark matter" genes of your favorite phage to any selectable phenotype, guiding the path from fun observations to molecular mechanisms. A thread 1/8

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On Oct 1, 2025, GISAID informed us that they had ended updates to the flat file of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences and associated metadata that we had used to update Nextstrain analyses since Feb 2020. GISAID's stated rationale was that their "resources are limited". 1/5

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Job alert🚨📢! Join us as Director of the SIB Centre for Pathogen Bioinformatics, on a topic where global collaboration is particularly important, in a highly stimulating environment. This is a research infrastructure leadership position. Apply or spread the word! apply.refline.ch/499599/0346/...

Director, Center for Pathogen Bioinformatics

The Centre for Pathogen Bioinformatics (CPB) is a unit of SIB which offers expertise and services in pathogen bioinformatics, computational molecular epidemiology and related multi-site project manage...

apply.refline.ch

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU. Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

Signal@signal.org · 10mo ago

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...

Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians. It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical. While here, he developed a new way of aligning to millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Efficient sequence alignment against millions of prokaryotic genomes with LexicMap - Nature Biotechnology

LexicMap uses a fixed set of probes to efficiently query gene sequences for fast and low-memory alignment.

nature.com

Super excited that our group will be supported by an ERC Starting Grant! In project "InfoFate" we will study how cells use information in dynamical, neighborhood & mechanical signals to make decisions. We'll have PhD and Postdoc positions available, please get in touch if interested!

Biozentrum, University of Basel@biozentrum.unibas.ch · 11mo ago

Why do some cells become neurons and others muscle? Physicist Prof. David Brückner @davidbrueckner.bsky.social @biozentrum.unibas.ch @unibas.ch receives a prestigious #ERCStartingGrant to uncover how cells make life-shaping decisions. @erc.europa.eu www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/news/detail/...