iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Normalizing the editing process: Feedback is a good thing. Writing is iterative no matter how strong a writer you are. The more you normalize that, the less intimidating it feels. It might sting when someone cuts your favorite sentence—but you’ll survive, and it’ll be better for it. 19/n...

You can also add dynamic in-text callouts like “see Figure X” or “[Fig. X]” that auto-update when figure numbers change-- in any custom style you like. Just link them to the figure’s ID (e.g. #fig_qPCR). (Note: fig v. figur!) Full instructions here: github.com/davidrthorn/... 14/n...

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Figure tracking with Cross Reference: Figure order always changes—especially after Reviewer #3. Instead of manually re-numbering, assign figures user-friendly IDs (e.g. #figur_qPCR). CrossRef automatically re-numbers and updates links. Shout out to @zachreitz.bsky.social for this tip!! 13/n...

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FIGURES! Tracking figures & making them play nice is like herding cats.... We’ve all fought with figures in Word—randomly shifting, disappearing like phantoms. Google Docs isn’t perfect, but it’s so much better. Pro tip: use a 1×2 table—image in one cell, caption in the other. 12/n...

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Any style you want: I use “National Library of Medicine (grant proposals with PMCID/PMID)” for grants—Paperpile finds PMCIDs >99% of the time, and also had an auto-update feature. But don’t forget to export straight to PDF and Edit -> remove links in Adobe Acrobat! 10/n...

Search mid-doc (Shift + Cmd + P): search PubMed, Google Scholar, or your own library while writing. No reference library needed—just use keywords, author, PMID/PMCID, or direct links. It even remembers past refs and inserts them with one click. 9/n...

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Google Docs has a treasure trove of add-ons. You can create custom header styles, save formatting presets, and use smart chips to link between related docs. 6/n...

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Write from Anywhere (and I mean anywhere). I wrote across a bridge every day during my postdoc commute. Google Docs on mobile is shockingly robust—real-time edits, autosave, and easy stop-start if you get a text or almost walk into someone (sorry 😬). 5/n....

Where I wrote most of my faculty applications, fellowships, and papers.

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Emma Chory, Ph.D. @chorye.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Version Control — “FINAL_v3_reallyFINAL.docx” is so 2010. Google Docs saves every keystroke, tracks changes, and lets you label snapshots (“Initial Draft,” “Emma’s Rewrite,” etc.). Pro tip: name versions as you go—it’ll help you in the long run. 4/n...

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Join us in June for the 2025 Synthetic Biology: Engineering, Evolution, & Design (SEED) meeting! #SEED2025. We have some phenomenal speakers lined up! Abstracts are due March 23rd! synbioconference.org/2025

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Emma Chory, Ph.D. @chorye.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Hey #labautomationfolks. If you’re at #SLAS2025, make sure to stop by Joseph Laforet’s poster on what Prof. @cameronkimbme.bsky.social and I have been working on this year re: open source robotics education with @pylabrobot.bsky.social! 🦾 www.linkedin.com/posts/joseph...

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Our robots are also prone to… well, floods. 🌧️ Everything has backup pumps and multiple levels of containment, but now we use liquid level sensors to catch issues early. 💧 If a leak’s detected, Slack immediately shouts at us. 13/n...

Our robots throw temper tantrums sometimes. 🤖💥 For this, we wrote custom email alerts into their code. These funnel to Slack, so we have a permanent record of what went wrong and can crowdsource fixing it. 🛠️🙌 12/n...

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Freezers fail. 🥶 Incubators die. 🧫 Enough said. We have temp sensors on literally everything. They only send SMS, so: Google Voice → Zapier → Slack. No lost cell lines. 🙌 11/n...

3️⃣ If you’ve made it this far… the final category is alerts 🚨 We created an email just for emergencies and slapped a label on all our equipment. Neighbors email us if something’s melting down. Zapier pings the Slack #alerts channel and texts me and one or two lab members. Crisis averted 🚨 10/n...

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Zapier now integrates with the ChatGPT API, which does image to text, and extracts all the key details (prompts in images). Then it: 1️⃣ Logs the details into a spreadsheet for tracking 2️⃣ Saves the image to google drive This system took some effort to set up, but it’s been a game-changer. 9/n...

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Processing receipts is literally the worst. Not everyone has a finance admin, and even if you do, it sucks to overload them with every little thing. This one is a little more advanced, but here’s how I do receipt tracking. I snap a photo, email it to our lab’s receipt email…. 8/n...

Group 2️⃣: Ugh. Money. No one teaches us to be accountants 💸 We use Quartzy for orders/inventory. Every time someone requests an item, quartzy webhook sends the info to Slack—tagging the requester and whoever’s responsible for placing the order. ✅ Same goes for when an order is received. 📦 7/n...

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Freezers fail. 🥶 Incubators die. 🧫 Enough said. We have temp sensors on literally everything. They only send SMS, so: Google Voice → Zapier → Slack. No lost cell lines. 🙌 11/n...

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We also have weekly lab jobs on a rotating schedule. Each week Zapier sends personalized Slack reminders with checklists to whoever is ”task master”. Same principle. 6/n...

Lab meeting is sacred, and bagels are non-negotiable 🥯, but it helps to have a reminder. Here’s how it works: Zapier checks a Google Sheet every week to look up who’s presenting, on bagel duty. Then it sends reminders via Slack and email (and attaches an animal gif, because why not). 5/n...

We get a lot of interest from @dukeubme.bsky.social undergrads—but I’m hopeless with email. We created a Google Form for students, and Zapier sends responses to a private Slack channel for PhD students and postdocs. This way, every student gets seen, and less people get left behind. 4/n...

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