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Kelsey Florek

@k-florek.net
481 followers 115 following 25 posts

Infectious Disease Genomics and Data Scientist @ Wisconsin State Laboratory #publichealth, #genomics, #infectiousdiseases, #openscience, #opendata Personal account, art and opinions are my own.

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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 17/09/2025
A painting I made as appreciation for all the work our public health labs do! With a subtle nod to genomics as a part of that ☺️ #publichealth #art #watercolor
A slightly abstract painting of a pair of women wearing blue lab coats working in the laboratory with the the shape of a DNA helix between them.
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Bill Hanage @billhanage.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
It is certainly reasonable to question exactly how helpful covid boosters are for younger people, but the new FDA policy goes beyond that... hsph.harvard.edu/news/new-cov...
hsph.harvard.edu
New COVID vaccine policy limits choice, could raise risk for younger groups | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Bill Hanage discusses the implications of a new FDA policy that will limit the COVID-19 vaccine to people over age 65 and those with certain medical conditions.
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 12/05/2025
I am very excited to share that we have a publication describing the State Public Health Bioinformatics (StaPH-B) Docker container project!! 🧬🖥️ Amazing work by the community and a special thanks to the co-authors who keep this project going!! #Bioinformatics #StaPH-B wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/...
wwwnc.cdc.gov
Advantages of Software Containerization in Public Health Infectious Disease Genomic Surveillance
Software Containerization in Disease Surveillance
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 05/05/2025
Just finished a proof-of-concept using an LLM (Anthropic Claude) to connect genomic metadata fields from an internal LIMS system to NCBI's BioSample and SRA submission templates. A fantastic collaboration between Cal Poly, AWS, DCLS, and WSLH! aws.amazon.com/blogs/public... #bioinformatics
aws.amazon.com
Leveraging generative AI to accelerate public health genomics data standardization | Amazon Web Services
In this post, we discuss the AI Genomic Schema Harmonizer, a generative AI–powered application that revolutionizes how laboratories prepare genomic data for submission to public repositories.
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 04/05/2025
Saturday Morning Owl Painting #art #watercolor #owl
Watercolor painting of an owl with a variety of red and brown tones in a loose style
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 16/04/2025
It's been a bit since I've had the emotional bandwidth to be creative but it felt good to paint this #art #watercolor
A watercolor portrait of an older man with grey hair and beard feeding a seagull
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 28/03/2025
Did all the disks fail at the same time? I've heard of that happening...
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Duncan MacCannell @drm.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
arstechnica.com/health/2025/...
arstechnica.com
RFK Jr. claws back $11.4B in CDC funding amid wave of top-level departures
The funding went to state health departments for COVID-19 responses.
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 24/03/2025
"Build a Bioinformatician"
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 24/03/2025
The Rocinante "A legitimate salvage"
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 24/03/2025
This has been a fantastic workshop. Great takes and participation from everyone!
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 20/03/2025
It's rubbish how the dismantling of our education system is treated like an everyday bullet point 🤬🤬🤬
NBC News

Trump targets Education Department and Steve Kornacki's NCAA picks: Morning Rundown

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order to close the Education Department, which he has long pledged to dismantle.
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 28/02/2025
Big thanks to @torstenseemann.bsky.social for hosting me at the Centre for Pathogen Genomics. It was lovely to meet everyone and see the awesome binfo work happening in Asia-Pacific! #Austrakka #Bioinformatics #PublicHealth
Dr. Torsten Seemann and Dr. Kelsey Florek standing in front of a seated audience next to a presentation slide displaying the title "Building Resilient Public Health Genomic Systems with Data Lakes and Automation".
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Alt CDC (they/them) @altcdc.altgov.info · 28/02/2025
🎤 Ask us anything! 🙋‍♂️🙋‍♀️🙋 In honor of reaching 100K (❣️) followers, we are holding an AMA right now! This is an #AltGov tradition and since we stand on the shoulders of our AltGov fam, we have gathered our team and are happy to take questions in the responses. ⚠️ We do not give medical or legal advice.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 14/02/2025
Make no mistake. This is an all-out attack on health in America. Not only is the EIS vital to controlling infectious disease; it was where a remarkably high fraction of our public health leaders received formative training and experience. www.statnews.com/2025/02/14/t...
statnews.com
CDC cuts expected to devastate Epidemic Intelligence Service, a ‘crown jewel’ of public health
Members of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service were warned Friday that many of them were about to be fired
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 04/02/2025
Book burning is book burning whether it's digital or physical
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Kristian G. Andersen @kgandersen.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
ASM is an embarrassment - plain and simple. Just disgraceful. @vscooper.micropopbio.org, will we see more courageous leadership this summer? If there's anything left by then, it's going to be necessary, I'm sad to say.
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 03/02/2025
Crow friends are the best!
A crow standing on a stump with cat kibble looking at the camera.
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 31/01/2025
"Shock and awe" was the strategy from the start. Its goal, create confusion and paralysis. Pick issues and fight them, coordinate and resist. Write senators and representatives and donate to organizations taking action if you can.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 27/01/2025
Withdrawing US funding from the World Health Organization is a potential disaster for public health worldwide, due to the impact it will have on the important work the WHO does. Preventing the CDC from even *talking* with WHO personnel is a step much farther toward undermining global health & safety
apnews.com
CDC ordered to stop working with WHO immediately, upending expectations of an extended withdrawal
U.S. public health officials have been told to stop working with the World Health Organization, effective immediately. The surprise decision is focused on the U.S.
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 23/01/2025
Thanks 😊 I'm hanging in there, I hope you are doing ok!
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 23/01/2025
Amongst sailors, the swallow represents a hope of returning home. Perched on a sunflower of warmth and joy it is a symbol of hope. That we can return from the insanity that has begun. #watercolor #swallow #art #painting
A watercolor painting of a blue swallow perched on a sunflower with another in the background.
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 17/01/2025
It's Friday afternoon, it's 18 F outside, I'm in the basement with a space heater, it's dark, and I don't have any more meetings today... It's time to code!
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 17/01/2025
As one of the faculty helping with this program I am really excited for the content that is being put together for this program! I wish something like this existed when I was starting in public health
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 17/01/2025
bsky.app/profile/carl...
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 17/01/2025
My first Bluesky painting post and also my first duck! Here is a Barrow's goldeneyes watercolor from a reference photo taken by @carlbergstrom.com
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Duncan MacCannell @drm.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Strategic investment in innovative laboratory and informatic technologies is critical for both public health and national security. Read more about our work to build resilient, adaptable, and pathogen agnostic infectious disease surveillance across the US public health system www.cdc.gov/amd
cdc.gov
Advanced Molecular Detection (AMD)
CDC’s Advanced Molecular Detection program leads national efforts to develop and expand the use of
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 13/01/2025
I saw this and thought the same thing! Your photos are gorgeous and with your permission I'd love to use them for a watercolor paintings! I will of course credit you for the original photo.
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 10/01/2025
I figured that might be the case but thought I'd mention it anyways
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 10/01/2025
We had some luck with the illumina respiratory pathogen id/amr panel (RPIP).
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 09/01/2025
Agreed, It will be sad to leave Instagram since I follow so many amazing artists. I was concerned when they started scraping images to train meta AI models but this officially the end for me.
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Kelsey Florek @k-florek.net · 09/01/2025
I get the value creating better taxonomic methods for viruses but balancing taxonomic accuracy with common parlance is tricky in the face of rebuilding public trust. Perhaps aliases should be formally recognized as a part of the system?
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