Describe a problem in the Arab world that requires R&D to solve and describe the solution. You can get $2500. Excited to announce a technical essay contest called the sifr prize. Open to anyone anywhere. sifrprize.com

the sifr prize

What should exist for science and technology in the Arab world, but doesn't? An essay contest with thousands of dollars in prizes.

sifrprize.com

New pub from @ArcadiaScience 🧵 We found that C. smithii — a freshwater green alga — undergoes wild morphological transformations when grown on Marine Broth. Huge cells with mysterious wisp-like appendages. Here's what we saw. thestacks.org/publications... [1/9]

Morphological transformation of Chlamydomonas smithii grown in Marine Broth medium

Marine Broth induces extreme morphological transformation in C. smithii: Cells shift from typical ellipsoid shape to amorphous forms with thin wisp-like appendages containing mitochondria, revealing u...

thestacks.org

If anyone at #sfn25 near the poster floor has hand moisturizer that I could use I will name my second-born after you

We’ve been heads down @ArcadiaScience for a bit but the @arenabioworks news this week caused me to dump thoughts. hard things are hard; don’t be such a fucking hater. Reflections on parallels w our own institutional experiment here seemay.substack.com/p/big-experi...

Big experiments are only big if they can fail

Some reflections on Arena Bioworks' unexpected wind down as a fellow institutional experimentalist

seemay.substack.com

Excellent post by the creator of the hoax FormatMyPaper.com. "We’re a community of experts, terrified of a harmless prank site, yet seemingly unbothered by the multi-billion dollar publishing industry that actually takes our copyright, our labor, and our intellectual property every single day."

Beware giving this site your unpublished data

Users noticed the website had fake testimonials and a domain name registered seemingly overnight.

ubadah.substack.com

Scientists themselves determine what is valued within science. Yet we act as if beholden to external managers, bean-counters who confuse the production of papers with scientific progress. We don't have to find better ways to navigate the prison of metrics-driven scientific assessment.

Ubadah Sabbagh is referring to closed-access for-profit publishing here, but I keep thinking about how perfectly it describes the general push to incorporate large language models into the scientific workflow in the interest of higher "productivity". ubadah.substack.com/p/beware-giv...

PSA: Many of you may have noticed a website floating around called formatmypaper(dot)com. People rightly noted something was fishy. I dig into what happened here: open.substack.com/pub/ubadah/p...

Beware giving this site your unpublished data

Users noticed the website had fake testimonials and a domain name registered seemingly overnight.

open.substack.com

Woah just discovered this formatmypaper.com

FormatMyPaper - The End of Manuscript Formatting

Paste your paper, choose your journal, and let our AI handle the tedious rest. Get back to the science.

formatmypaper.com

If you've been hearing a lot about "AI Scientists" and wondered how much is real, how much is hype, and what's possible, so have I. So I spent some time thinking about it and this came out. open.substack.com/pub/ubadah/p...

excited about applying engineering + AI to frontier biology? we’re building tools @arcadiascience.com to help scientists move faster and smarter, and we’re hiring software engineers and applied ML engineers to join us. if that’s you, apply and let's talk:

This week, I continue my discussion with @ubadahsabbagh.com, Chief of Staff at Arcadia Science. We discuss his transition to industry, perspective on the state of academic research, and his visionary endeavors. www.podbean.com/eas/pb-3spkv...

folks, we’re hiring for scientist roles - lab tech - protein designer - molecular biologist - project scientist all onsite, all for creative people who believe in open science & wanna build cool shit. plus other stuff but that’s in the postings jobs.lever.co/arcadiascience @arcadiascience.com

>march 10 @arcadiascience.com announces new form of rapid publishing >apr 18 team reads a preprint, finds it interesting >9 work days later, team publishes results validating and extending model this is how science should be. open, rapid, with the community arcadia-science.github.io/2025-geno-ph...

Cross-trait learning with a canonical transformer tops custom attention in genotype-phenotype mapping –

arcadia-science.github.io

And the artist, Audrey Bell! www.aebellillustration.com

Not only do we do cool science but we have a badass illustrator for our pubs

This made me cry and it really should not have. It is a document of basic decency. Good for Tufts, may the other institutions grow a spine too. www.tufts.edu/president/sp...

popped over to make sure its still there

This message is for immigrants — everyone from naturalized citizens to the “undocumented”— you may decide to do some things differently and that’s ok, smart even. Be gentle to yourself & remember that fear is the authoritarian’s greatest weapon.

prudent reminder for scientists today, from a thousand years ago

my tl is once again flooded with dead palestinian children killed by israeli bombs we pay for

fast forward two months later, i spent 10 hours today with a group of bay area investors, tech entrepreneurs, creatives, academics, lawyers, and scientists planning projects to develop education and tech sectors in syria. we’re cooking 💚

Ubadah Sabbagh@ubadahsabbagh.com · 2y ago

Im in disbelief. The tyrannical dynasty that’s caused so many of us generations of pain, imprisoned and exiled my family, has ended. Hard to know what’s next in these conditions. But I’m relishing with my friends and family that we can, if only for a moment, finally breathe.

Whether from this indirects policy or some later thing, many labs will be shuttered. And I bet the first to go won't be those who mastered scientific theatrics & wasting taxpayer dollars, those skilled at prestige games and cronyism, or those rife with sexual harassment & abuse.

New job @arcadiascience.com! Ideally you've got a few years of experience post-PhD, in academia or elsewhere, and have some computational fluency in addition to experimental expertise. Added bonus, you'd get to join our pastry-fueled preprint comment parties like the one we're having today :)

Prachee Avasthi@pracheeac.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨Job Alert @arcadiascience.com! Are you an independent, generative, rigorous scientist that can pivot quickly? Can you apply your unique skills to a wide range of bio & tech problems? Can you work with other stellar scientists skilled in orthogonal domains? Join us! jobs.lever.co/arcadiascien...

Pleasure speaking with Katie @thetransmitter.bsky.social for her well researched story.

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 2y ago

Postdoctoral researchers sponsored by the National Institutes of Health now toil longer than ever before, for less money, fueling a decline in neuroscience postdocs. By Katie Moisse #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/academia/sta...

Academic scientists, I’m curious to hear what guidance (if any?) your institutions have offered re the disruption and uncertainty around NIH/NSF funding

“Relationships need repetition and structure to grow. They need rituals and habits.” www.theatlantic.com/family/archi...

The Easiest Way to Keep Your Friends

It’s a little boring, a little type A, and a lot better than letting relationships fizzle.

theatlantic.com

Que fantástica iniciativa para promover el rigor científico y premiar a quienes no suelen ser reconocidos por hacer las cosas "bien", aunque hacerlo así no valga para promociones, ni de puntos en esa investigación "al peso" a la que nos estamos acostumbrando...

Ubadah Sabbagh@ubadahsabbagh.com · 2y ago

NINDS just launched a $50K prize competition for early-career scientists championing research rigor beyond their normal duties. Do you organize workshops, journal clubs, or do work to try and shift culture? This could be you. www.challenge.gov?challenge=ni...

NINDS just launched a $50K prize competition for early-career scientists championing research rigor beyond their normal duties. Do you organize workshops, journal clubs, or do work to try and shift culture? This could be you. www.challenge.gov?challenge=ni...

Challenge.Gov

Challenge.Gov is the official GSA government website supporting prize challenges and prize competitions that are sponsored by the US federal government. Here federal agencies provide prize awards to ...

challenge.gov

When choosing a model organism, scientists often focus on a handful of species. But the tree of life offers much more, so how can we leverage it? Scientists @arcadiascience.com mapped 1 billion+ years of evolution and developed a rational approach anyone can use: doi.org/10.57844/arc...