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Emily Ricotta, PhD

@emilyricotta.bsky.social
529 followers 348 following 96 posts

Assistant Prof of #Epidemiology at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. #InfectiousDisease and trauma #epidemiologist. #DataScience and #DataReadiness. She/her/Dr. ~!Personal account - all opinions are my own!~

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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Participate in some research that a PhDc in my group is doing! Uniformed Services University is conducting <30min interviews w/ faculty at academic medical centers to understand administrative barriers to research. Email teresa.russell.ctr@usuhs.edu if interested.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
For the record: Memoli believes in old vaccine tech. That he awarded himself a ton of money to continue studying earlier this year (see a previous post of mine for deets) despite the rest of NIAID not being able to spend $$. He’s never supported mRNA tech because it competes w/ his research.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Thank you to the INCREDIBLE speakers in my Assumption Dysfunction symposium at #SER2025. The talks were fantastic and the meme game was strong. @faustobustos.bsky.social @germsandnumbers.bsky.social Laura Balzer and Kerollos Wanis!!!
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter accusations. Exactly what we love to see in federal leadership. 👌
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Reposted by Emily Ricotta, PhD
A. M. Vincent @vincent.northsky.social · 05/05/2025
FOR A STUDENT WHO USED AI TO WRITE A PAPER

Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious 
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous 
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.
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Reposted by Emily Ricotta, PhD
Jordan Zakarin @jordanz.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
The entirety of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health was wiped out last night in a form letter sent by RFK Jr. NIOSH is an agency in the CDC that investigates workplace hazards and finds solutions. It protects workers, so it’s gone. Even firefighters.
A screenshot from the CDC website showing that the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer is closed
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
I miss Dr. Fauci at the helm of NIAID, and public health in general.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
This is 0% surprising to those of us who know Matt Memoli personally. He’s a bad scientist (and a lot of other things too). He’s absolutely unqualified to be anywhere near NIH leadership. www.statnews.com/2025/05/03/n...
statnews.com
Scientists question NIH project’s use of 20th century technology to make a universal flu vaccine
$500 million NIH program to make vaccines against pathogens that can trigger pandemics uses approach pioneered in last century
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Cooool. This is... great. Just great.
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
NIH science is still making it into the world. Really enjoyed the conversations behind this paper - lots of big-picture questions about what makes research ethical and beneficial to the people involved, especially in a time of crisis, when "don't do the research" is sometimes the (difficult) answer
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Well that's absolutely horrible news.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Gosh I love just starting my NIH Grant Writing era at this moment in history. 😭
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
I am SO THRILLED to finally present our new paper on reforming observational studies in epidemic settings, published in @bmj.com BMJ Global Health. gh.bmj.com/cgi/content/... #Episky #Epidemiology #clinicalresearch #observational #IDSky
gh.bmj.com
Observational research in epidemic settings: a roadmap to reform
Observational studies are critical tools in clinical research and public health response, but challenges arise in ensuring the data produced by these studies are scientifically robust and socially val...
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
Loool. They think NIH employees are deliberately hindering their progress but actually eRA Commons is just unavailable as usual.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
#GrantOpportunity for US NGOs to collect, analyze, & use data to address inequities in the physical, economic, and social conditions of a place. Deadline 3/18. #equity #healthequity #dei #socialjustice tinyurl.com/3x6df76e
tinyurl.com
Local Data for Equitable Communities
This call for proposals invites eligible nonprofit organizations to apply for a grant to collect, analyze, and use data to inform efforts to improve the physical, economic, and social conditions of a ...
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
#EpiSky - did anyone manage to grab recent #CDC PRAMS data (2018-2022)? One of my PhD students needs it for her dissertation. Please DM me if you know where we can find it. #epidemiology #childhealth #maternalhealth #SPER #SER
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Gigi Gronvall @ggronvall.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
The US does not have an offensive bioweapons program. Gain of function research did not lead to SARS-CoV-2. The scientific evidence points to a NATURAL zoonosis, ie a jump from infected animals to people. If there is evidence to the contrary it has not been presented.
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Angie Rasmussen @angierasmussen.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
Elon doesn't give a shit about bioweapons research and would probably fund it if it were advantageous to him. The US doesn't do or fund any bioweapons research. Elon is lying that they do because he wants the tax dollars to subsidize him instead of the legitimate public health research we paid for.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
This thread contains a very clear breakdown of why a non-elected, non-career official having unfettered access to and control of information and spending is incredibly dangerous.
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John Kubale @johnkubale.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
If you’re looking for a place to archive open government data check out DataLumos @icpsr.bsky.social. #databs #academicsky #statsky #episky #rstats
datalumos.org
DataLumos
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Isaac Bogoch @isaacbogoch.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
To our American friends who may now be struggling to find health information on US websites: Please check out the Public Health Agency of Canada's website for helpful resources, updated dashboards & practical health tips. 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 canada.ca/en/public-he...
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
So all those times I bitched about the US not having centralized data repos? I’ve changed my mind. Decentralize it all. I’ll sign as many DUAs as I need to in the future just… everyone hide all of the pieces while we still can.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Now available: a very cool paper led by my collaborator James Anibal using illness episode audio data + traditional clinical data to create a Voice EHR that can be analyzed with ML to predict disease outcomes! doi.org/10.3389/fdgt... #Episky #publichealth #AI #ML #LLM #research
doi.org
Frontiers | Voice EHR: introducing multimodal audio data for health
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
A quick read in @science.org about the importance of regulating science, especially clinical trials. I particularly liked the paragraph in the attached image (ALT text supplied) www.science.org/content/blog...
There has long been a romanticized vision floating around of what medical progress would be like if only the bureaucrats and paper-pushers would get out of the way. There is talk of an "invisible graveyard" of patients who died before the slow, painful process of regulated medical research could get around to helping them. And you know what? They're right - up to a point. If you just look at the successful treatments, then yes, you can say that If Only We'd Sped That One Up we would have saved more lives. But too many of the Invisible Graveyard people don't do the full bookkeeping on all the stuff that doesn't work (or worse, makes people worse). The clinical trial system contains those failures and isolates them from the general population of patients, while at the same time providing real evidence for their failure and thus solid reasons to go away and try something else.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Using NIH All of Us, we developed easy to compute phenotypes for respiratory viruses like #flu & #RSV by integrating billing codes, prescriptions & lab results from >265K people! This will help id cohorts for others doing EHR research. tinyurl.com/42uvbz7r #publichealth #datascience #Episky
tinyurl.com
Computable Phenotypes for Respiratory Viral Infections in the All of Us Research Program
Electronic health records (EHRs) contain rich temporal data about infectious diseases, but an optimal approach to identify infections remains undefined. Using the All of Us Research Program, we develo...
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 19/09/2024
If you hate statistics like I do, then you'll love my free lectures. Putting science before statistics, 20 lectures from basics of inference & causal modeling to multilevel models & dynamic state space models. It's all free, made with love and sympathy. 🧪 #stats www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
This is your end of year reminder to get your moles checked annually!! Prevention is much better than treatment, and catching things early sucks less than catching things late. Just had a pigmented spindle cell nevus removed by my excellent dermatologist to be extra cautious! Happy new year!
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
Please enjoy these cute dogs who were very confused why they were left in charge of themselves. “They’ll run away!” my husband says. Do they LOOK like they had any interest in moving? They’re practically area rugs.
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Caitlin Rivers @cmyeaton.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
Influenza-like illness coming in hot
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
Worked 8 hours today and all I have to show for it is the first *paragraph* of a specific aims page. Am I happy with it? No. Do I at least feel like I’ve made progress? Also no. #Science #GrantWriting #Episky
media.tenor.com
a man is sitting on a couch with his eyes closed and says " guys please let me hate myself "
ALT: a man is sitting on a couch with his eyes closed and says " guys please let me hate myself "
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
This is a great 🧵 about why kids still need #vaccines, even (especially) if the incidence of disease is low. When it’s no longer medically necessary to get a vaccine, they’ll stop recommending it (like smallpox for the majority of the 🌎). Till then, stay up to date with your vaccines!
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Are we in the damn dark ages?? We have pasteurization for a reason. Just like we have antibiotics, vaccines, and other medical *advances*. Please don’t take us backwards. Don’t make your children live like that.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
I’ll be adding this to my list! I heard Brian Deer speak many years ago and he was incredibly well spoken so I imagine his book will be an excellent read. Reminder: Vaccines do NOT cause autism. We have thoroughly researched this already. We do not need to divert resources to do it again.
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Saskia Popescu @saskiapopescu.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
“A single mutation in the hemagglutinin, the main protein on H5N1’s exterior, could turn a virus that is currently not well equipped to infect people into one that is much more capable of doing so.” www.statnews.com/2024/12/05/h...
statnews.com
Single mutation in H5N1 bird flu virus may make it more infectious to humans, study finds
Study published in Science says a single hemagglutinin mutation, similar to one seen in a Canadian case, could make H5N1 better suited to infect people.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Today I had the privilege of visiting Capitol Hill with some of my current and former students to meet with Senator LTC (Ret.) Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and discuss health policy and the military. She’s absolutely lovely! #HealthPolicy #MilitaryHealth #Fieldtrip
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Just got student feedback from my Epi I class (very first time in-person teaching!) and it was across the board incredibly positive. Probably a quarter of the class commented specifically about liking my energy, but my favorite comment said I'm "a bit much." *Cackles* Oh, if only they knew.
media.tenor.com
a man is sitting in the back seat of a car surrounded by pink feathers ..
ALT: a man is sitting in the back seat of a car surrounded by pink feathers ..
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Having POTS I struggle w exercise. Today I worked up the nerve to go to an intro Pilates class and it was great! Too bad I just noticed I PUT MY LEGGINGS ON BACKWARDS AND WORE THEM THAT WAY THE ENTIRE CLASS. Guess I can’t ever go back there again. Probably best I avoid Bethesda entirely too. 🤦🏻‍♀️
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Chise @sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
THIS IS HUGE! An HIV PrEP drug candidate in the form of a twice-yearly subcutaneous injection has been shown to reduce HIV infections by 96% in a SECOND late-stage Phase III trial. Lenacapavir was 99.9% effective at preventing HIV in MORE THAN 2,000 participants. Let’s talk about that! 🧪🧵⬇️
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Saskia Popescu @saskiapopescu.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
A pretty consistent (& disappointing) commonality among many of the new nominations for critical roles in our nation’s health, is both the sharing of health misinfo, but also pushing dangerous pandemic response measures while systematically dumping on public health (1/2).
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
There’s an #RSV #vaccine available in the US for children! If your kids can’t get it, there’s less chance for you to get it! Speaking from personal experience, it can be gnarly 😑🤒 #publichealth #IDSky
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
“It’s not saying ‘just let the experts decide.’ It’s saying that if you want to question the experts, you need more than an ax to grind.” 🙌 louder for the people in the back!!🙌 #publichealth #scicomm #trustinscience NYT gift article: www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/o...
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
For the love of all that's holy, please don't drink raw milk. There are so many many reasons not to, and H5N1 is only the latest.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
I’ll be really sad if Dr. Monica Bertagnolli has to leave the NIH. She has been an exciting new light for the institutes, visible to and engaged with her people, with strong opinions and interesting ideas. Not to mention finally having a woman at the helm for the first time since 1991.
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Dr. Echo Rivera @echorivera.com · 25/11/2024
PSA: you’re only gonna have like 1-3 weeks to put together your job talk. I am dreading the wave of panic emails I always get in the spring from PhDs & postdocs because they know their slides aren’t great. Please. Plan ahead. Start thinking up improving your presentation skills now 😭 #PostDocs
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
I stopped using Mendeley in 2013 because it became trash when Elsevier bought it. It’s disappointing to see the monopoly they’re building but I’m glad to see people calling it out. Not sure what can be done about it since corps seem to have more rights than people these days.
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
I’m working on developing a global data standard for infectious disease research in epidemic settings. I was selected as a finalist for the @einsteinberlin.bsky.social Early Career Award for this project! I didn’t win, but watch my presentation here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxs3...
youtube.com
Einstein Foundation ECR Award 2024 Finalists: GIDS FOR EPIDEMIC SETTINGS
YouTube video by Einstein Foundation Berlin
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
*snortlaughs*
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Sharing this so I can refer back to it myself later!
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Incredible!
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Emily Ricotta, PhD @emilyricotta.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Since I’m here, please allow me to share a few of my most recent preprints! Threaded below!
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