Congrats Adam!

This makes sense because they can apply their shoe design knowledge to build an AI data center, which is very similar

Struggling shoe retailer Allbirds makes bizarre pivot to AI, adds $127 million in value Allbirds announced a deal with American Exchange Group to sell its intellectual property and other assets for $39 million in March.

This is totally reasonable and normal and not a bubble

www.cnbc.com/2026/04/15/a...

Cool new study -- they used historical water and well water fluoride levels across Wisconsin counties, and linked these to IQ and cognition from age 16 all the way to age 80.

Guess what they found? No association between fluoride levels and cognition - at any age

www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

I'm thrilled to announce I'm joining Purdue University as a tenured professor this August! Purdue holds a special place in my heart: its undergraduate program prepared this Indiana farm girl…... I'm thrilled to announce I'm joining Purdue University as a tenured professor this August! Purdue holds a special place in my heart: its undergraduate program prepared this Indiana farm girl remarkab...

I'm moving to Purdue University as a tenured professor this summer! Excited to hire postdocs there and get a lab up and running with @runxishen.bsky.social as co-lead.

More details: www.linkedin.com/posts/anneca...

Congrats Anne!

Visited Zion National Park for the first time - impossible to convey how beautiful it is

Sean Davis & I are hiring a postdoc to work on turning massive public biological data collections into reusable engines for discovery.

#ML / #AI + large-scale omics + open software

Details + apply: cu.taleo.net/careersectio...

seandavi.github.io | thekrishnanlab.org
@cubiomedinfo.bsky.social

Opinion | This Is What Will Ruin Public Opinion Polling for Good

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/o...

I'm generally a fan of AI, but I just don't see how this is going to improve polling. Will just make an already messy data even more biased and problematic

You need to make AI guidelines for your lab Here's why you should, and how to start

“first drafts of Results, Discussion, and Introduction should be the trainee’s own work. AI can help with grammar…tightening prose…critiquing the logic of an argument you’ve already made. But the hard part of forming the argument needs to be yours.’ blekhman.substack.com/p/you-need-t...

Thank you for writing these papers Arjun!

A lab using my recent articles on AI use during PhD training doi.org/10.5281/zeno... & doi.org/10.5281/zeno... to kickstart a discussion and draft guidelines for their group is exactly the kind of use I hoped these articles would inspire! Highly recommend reading Ran's post.

You need to make AI guidelines for your lab Here's why you should, and how to start

I wrote about why every lab should have AI use guidelines, and how to do it.

open.substack.com/pub/blekhman...

After 13 years, the Blekhman Lab has a new website: blekhmanlab.org

The old one was hand-coded HTML from my first week as a faculty member. It... showed its age. This one was built with Claude Code. Progress on multiple fronts.

Southern Utah countryside

AI badly needs a dose of skepticism Some scientists are too eager to believe their own claims

"AI scientists are building ever-larger models, and then claiming that each model can solve even more than the previous one.

Then, model in hand, they go around looking around for problems to solve"

stevensalzberg.substack.com/p/ai-is-star...

Layers. Today in Chicago

Predicting host sex from metagenomic data

Cool approach that uses the "host contamination" reads in shotgun metagenomic data, and (using as few as 450 reads) can accurately predict host sex. Works well across different host species and body sites

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Project Hail Mary is one of my favorite books of the last few years, but it was hard to suspend disbelief with some of the story lines. Like that the main character is a PhD microbiologist who is also an expert in physics. Impossible

Not sure, but I think this is standard in academic medicine in the US because of market rates and competition

Thanks for the vote of confidence :) but my research is more upstream - we're looking for someone who can drive clinical translation and therapeutic development

We're searching for the next Director of the Duchossois Family Institute at UChicago

The most exciting leadership role in microbiome science right now: lead faculty, cutting-edge cores, and an FDA-approved facility for microbiome therapeutics

Email/DM me if interested

apply.interfolio.com/182203

Here's why this matters:

Something that keeps happening recently: I open an email (or essay, cover letter, whatever), within 0.5 seconds recognize it's AI-written, then I delete it immediately.

Anyone else's brain developed this new pattern recognition skill?

Leipzig U and the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) have an open faculty position (W2) in evolutionary population genetics! This position is tenured and comes with generous core funding. We are eager to welcome a new colleague! Deadline March 11.
www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetai...

I once did 2 study sections week after week. Never again

Got 5 NIH study section invitations in one week. For 5 different panels in May. Never happened before. Not sure what's going on but feels like there is a serious strain on the system.

AI Keeps Failing at Microbiome Prediction Why simple models keep winning, where deep learning still shines, and where the field is headed

AI has huge promise for genomics -- but it has consistently failed at microbiome-based prediction.

My new post on why simple models keep winning, where deep learning actually earns its place, and where the field is headed

blekhman.substack.com/p/ai-keeps-f...

Last week I took one of my favorite Chicago photos of all time. This city is LONG