Wonderful news, well-deserved and very exciting! Where (physically) will you be based? I’ll be in sabbatical in France (Montpellier, Sept. 2026-July 2027) so I hope we can connect!

Happy to share that I've accepted a CNRS Chaire de Professeur Junior position in computational biology as part of the Génomique Métabolique unit at Genoscope! Looking forward to working with my fellow researchers there as well as with the broader 🇫🇷 research community starting this summer!

🇺🇳/🇮🇹 🔜 🇫🇷

We didn't want anyone to miss out, so we've extended the deadline for abstract submission to MEEHubs2026 until this Sunday (April 26). ✨

Please submit and please re-share!
meehubs.org

painted bike lane Proposed bike lane cancelled after failing to get approval from every living and deceased resident within 25 km.

"Proposed bike lane cancelled after failing to get approval from every living and deceased resident within 25 km."

Dan Weinberger and I @yalesph.bsky.social are hiring multiple research positions in microbial/virus sequencing and bioinformatics workflows with respiratory pathogens, including Streptococcus pneumoniae, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, RSV, and/or hMPV.

See 👉 forms.gle/xpmzTtNqHFqK...

Photo of the boards of an outdoor hockey rink, with ice completely melted and hair grass left. Mont Royal looms in the background.

Ready for spring hockey in Montreal

Don’t be sorry! I appreciate you sharing this tale of woe.

Nobel Prize!

The Onion is jokes?!

Trouble is… quite a bit of evolution probably DID happen today!!

If I helped one person today, I’ll count it as a win! =)

Sneaky bastards! I turned off CoPilot in Outlook when it appeared about a year ago. Just noticed it reappeared and I had to turn it off again.

Keeping useless AI creep at bay requires constant vigilance... and it's tiring.

Happy Thursday. I am enraged after reading this. Thank you for sharing this, Meren!
As a community, we need to do better!

osf.io/preprints/me...

1/8 🔥 New preprint dropped: Dynamic co-existence of bacteriophages and their hosts 🦠 in the Arabidopsis thaliana 🌱 phyllosphere
Work led by the indomitable @sheilaroitman.bsky.social‬
#plantscience #microbiome #holobiont
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Unfalsifiable by Design: A Year of Trying and Failing to Reproduce a Human Microbiome and Autism Study The myth of open data, reproducibility, responsibility, and accountability in science, and your role in it

How every layer of science's "self-correcting machinery" failed when Iva Veseli and I simply wanted to reproduce the findings of a high-profile study on gut microbiome and autism:

merenlab.org/2026/04/15/u...

Budding infectious disease modellers:

We're running our intermediate-level infectious disease modelling short courses at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Each course is 4 days, and we're running them over the first two weeks of September.

Restaurant scene with a Canadiens jersey displayed (Caulfield 22) displayed outside the kitchen

It’s that time of year when even our Michelin-mentioned restaurants get on the Habs playoff wagon… and I’m here for it!

Join us in Montreal for the Canada/US Northeast hub!

I will give a talk and @gmdouglas.bsky.social @nagissa.bsky.social & Tim Blower will surely give *great talks*

Opportunities for student talks and posters and a good time guaranteed!

This profile of star science education researcher Brian Donovan, who worked to reform systematic teaching of "genetic essentialism" (which undergirds racism), is terrific.

Even better, his work itself: empirical studies of curriculum interventions that work. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Social Lives of Viruses is coming to Vancouver, Canada, from 4th-8th August 2026!

This is a free meeting dedicated to all aspects of virus-virus interactions & evolution.

To apply: socialviruses.zoology.ubc.ca

@sociovirology.bsky.social #socialviruses #evosky #lovevirology #virosky

Global Wildlife Trade Fuels Spread of Disease From Animals to People

Our study featured in @nytimes.com! www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/s...

Don't miss this fantastic conference! It's not only a pioneer in hub-based conferences (you go in person but connect to 7 other hubs worldwide), but it's one of the best conferences in the field! Register now and see you there :)

REMINDER - Abstract submission deadline for MEEHubs2026 is April 19! Get you abstract in and present at one of the hubs August 3-5, 2026✨You'll be in great company! We have a fantastic lineup of speakers‼️

Links and more info here: meehubs.org

Rapid evolution of Klebsiella pneumoniae biofilms in vitro delineates adaptive changes selected during infection - Nature Communications Biofilm formation on implanted medical devices facilitates infection by the pathogen Klebsiella pneumoniae. Here, Zaborskytė et al. use experimental evolution to show that the bacteria rapidly evolve ...

🆒 new pub!
Rapid evolution of Klebsiella pneumoniae biofilms in vitro -> adaptations selected during infection by @gretazabo.bsky.social & Linus Sandegren
*hypermucoidy evolves via 📈c-di-GMP, overlaps w/ mutations in UTI and wound isolates.
*pleasure to advise this!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I would still cherish it, I promise! You can also send stickers and temporary tattoos.

Congrats all! FOMO is kicking in. See you there next year!

Handwritten letter on university letterhead from an emeritus professor in the department congratulating me on my promotion.

Can we PLEASE bring back more handwritten notes in academic? Reprint requests, “hey, I liked your paper,” and little notes of congratulations like the one I just received that really made my day!

Note to self: do more of this!

Now to go find some university letterhead and a fountain pen…

What happens *after* enemy release? In a new paper, we present 7 years of infection & immune trait dynamics in 16 lake populations of stickleback.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
This is definitely the longest-scale study I've done in my career, I'm very excited to see it out.
1/6

Open Positions -

Open postdoc position in my lab on HGT and interbacterial competition. We seek candidates with a PhD in microbiology (or related fields)+ strong 1st-author publications.
Curious, highly motivated, and dedicated team players ready to contribute fully are encouraged to apply. Details: tiny.cc/cz01101

The Artemis capsule descending to Earth, with three red-and-white parachutes deployed and a wide white course cloud behind it.

Humanity: Pretty awesome, sometimes.