iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Kyber-crystal-focused carbonite etching for midochlorian morphological characterization

klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The hyperbole of "AI could never make a dangerous virus because it doesn't address a bottleneck" confounds me. AI systems are useful TODAY for modifying the properties of viruses in ways that are superior to what we could do ten years ago.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Looking for a postdoc to use protein structure to change the way we calculate evolutionary relationships so we can unlock the secrets of early life on earth. This is an urgent & impactful computational biology project. jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/280...

jobs.rutgers.edu

Post Doctoral Associate

The Kaelber lab located in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry on Rutgers’ Busch Campus, within walking distance of research buildings for computer science and medicine as well as fun...

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Micah Warren @micah541.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

cloak and dagger navier stokes cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/st...

cims.nyu.edu

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

When Prof. Yonath so generously shared a meal with us young students, an administrator-type asked if she'd participate in a project about being discriminated against. "I don't want to talk to young people about that," she replied, "I think they need to hear about the joy of doing science first."

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Is there something special about the field of radiology that causes academics in that field to preferentially be drawn to publishing dumbass op-eds about society?

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Turned in my dosimeter today. End of an era!

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I have never seen a double standing ovation at a scientific meeting before but it was a beautiful moment to see the warm reception of Ralph Baric and of his recent work on merbecoviruses, particularly at a time when he is being sorely persecuted despite his record of service to the country.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Maggie Cheung. I would probably learn a couple new languages as a fringe benefit

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Margaret Harris @drmlharris.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

"Scientific systems rarely collapse through a single dramatic event. They decline incrementally: one technician dismissed, one laboratory left unrepaired, one instrument taken out of service, one young scientist deciding to build a career elsewhere." physicsworld.com/a/letter-fro... ⚛️🧪

physicsworld.com

Letter from Argentina: 'an empty desk and an idle electron microscope signal the erosion of the country's science' – Physics World

Faramarz S Gard laments the decline of Argentine science

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Galloway is such an idiot blowhard. I'm sure he'll find some way to make UC worse

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

this is pretty funny but also reminds me of the time my 7th grade math teacher did not know what factorials were and told me "you can't just make up your own operation even if you decide that the exclamation point is a symbol for it"

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Today is the 250th anniversary of Boston’s mass inoculation against smallpox on July 3, 1776. The city was effectively closed to commerce from July through September 1776. The mass immunization effort was cheered as evidence of true independence. Here's how I described it in my book:

While John Adams and fifty-five men in Philadelphia debated a resolution on independence and the final wording of the Declaration of Independence, the people of Boston declared their own independence from smallpox. The measures taken in both cities provided hope that America would not only be a republic free of a king but also a country free from disease. On July 3, 1776, a day after independence was declared in Philadelphia, the Massachusetts General Court voted to allow inoculation. Despite the dangers of infection, the people of Boston and the surrounding areas cheered the news. Ezekiel Price, a court official and insurance broker, declared “Liberty is given for to inoculate for the small-pox; many begin upon it this afternoon.” Hannah Winthrop described the scene: “Boston has given up its Fears of an invasion & is busily employd in Communicating the Infection. Straw Beds & Cribs are daily Carted into the Town.” She wrote that “Men Women & children eagerly crowding to inoculate is I think as modish as running away from the Troops of a barbarous George was the last year.” Dr. James Warren wrote to John Adams that the “rage for inoculation” had “whirled me into its vortex.…” Warren and his wife Mercy Otis joined Abigail Adams and her four children who had been invited to be inoculated at Abigail’s uncle’s house in Boston along with Abigail’s sisters Elizabeth Cranch and Mary Shaw and their families. Even though Boston was teeming with the sick, the prospect that the city could conquer smallpox made it "a scene delightful indeed." Cotton Tufts was satisfied that he could now "take my leave of Earth, satisfied that the Day of American Redemption was at Hand."

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

The only logical conclusion is that ancient hominids reproduced via parthenogenesis

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

My "Human T-lymphotrophic Virus" hat is dying, so I need a new virus hat. Anyone got a lead? Old conference swag, some indie maker, etc?

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

As a biologist, (ergo a layman w/r/t national intelligence), I've found it surprising how, with each declassification, we see how little was added by SIGINT. I assumed we'd been monitoring gene synth and oligo sequences in China since, like, 2006. But when you're outside everything looks easy!

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pilarcossio.bsky.social @pilarcossio.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

*Preprint Alert*: How do we measure resolution when biomolecules won't sit still? 🔬 Estimating it for a static cryo-EM reconstruction is standard. But what about a conformational ensemble? arxiv.org/abs/2606.14449 with the amazing henryhmattingly.bsky.social and @lukeevanshandle.bsky.social #cryoEM

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

After nine years at the head of the Rutgers CryoEM & Nanoimaging Facility, I am stepping down to focus on scholarship in the area of virology. I will be joining the Dept of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Rutgers as an associate professor in the fall.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Banning American scholars from writing articles or collaborating with counterparts in other countries is such a terminally idiotic form of shooting ourselves in the foot in terms of national competitiveness that it makes no sense to make this a term of receiving R&D grant support.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Just saw the news that HHS has hounded coronavirus expert Ralph Baric into retirement. Baric is an accidental hero who was doing blue-sky research on animal coronaviruses before SARS thrust him into the role of protecting us from pandemics. Without his work, SARS-CoV-2 would have been far worse.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

One thing that drives me nuts in peer review is when there are concerns about a manuscript's fundamental significance or fit for journal and it gets pushed on to a 2nd or 3rd round of review before rejection. This is not something you can fix in an additional round of review!

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

This is interesting...our experience is we get devitrification under similar thermal annealing cycles (although we used buffered protein solutions instead of whole cells, so one possible difference is the intrinsic cryoprotectant ability of cells)

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

I suspect most cryo-EM experts leave unsaid that we all think filter paper blot-based plunge freezing will be obsolete in 10 years but we have no idea what technique will obsolete it.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

It's time for me to hire someone so we can determine the origin of life in the universe together. Is that of interest to anybody

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

We had a cure for hemophilia A, until today. This feels so strange to say, or to contemplate: that we can un-cure a disease because of collective disinterest.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

dicing up some grubs for old-fashioned diagnostic virology

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

At what resolution in cryo-EM do you see clear holes in aromatics? I see in some X-ray crystallography literature people are saying 1.6Å, but in cryo they seem quite visible at lower resolutions than this.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

life achievement: replaced my chainsaw chain for the first time

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

She couldn't resist the opportunity to explicitly say she's punishing Harvard for hiring former elected or appointed Democrats. This level of explicitly partisan score-settling is wrong and un-American.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

I was thinking to myself "what were the best years so far for USA? maybe 1998 and 2014?" This leads to my new hypothesis (nonserious) that the best years are going to be an inflection point in the median income (PPP-adjusted) with positive first derivative.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Trafficking studies that rely on following virus microinjected into the cytoplasm aren't valid if the virus in native cells would be inside a membranous organelle.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Since I got a third cryo-transmission electron microscope, I have more 'scope time than I know what to do with. If you have a project that requires a large amount of data collection, get in contact because we can probably work something out.

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Annika Barber @annikabarber.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Wondering if your study section cancelled? I update this sheet daily. As of today, 56/124 study sections that should have met since Jan 2, 2025 have "not met as scheduled." docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

docs.google.com

2025 Study section tracking

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Does anybody else find it weird that it's common for receptor homologs to bind different viral species of the same family but in a completely different pose? I would've thought a priori that if receptor use is conserved, the pose will also be conserved,

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Next Thursday I am teaching in the morning, flying to Wyoming, dinner with the faculty, meetings/seminar all day, flying back on the red-eye. Feels like what my schedule used to be like pre-pandemic

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Mike Kusiak @skibidimckoozyak.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

This is great visual of what IDC is used for from the Council of Governmental Relations (COGR).

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CantlonLab @cantlonlab.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Academics with tenure: we aren’t supposed to cower and grovel for money like people do in other jobs. The whole point of tenure is to be liberated and courageous.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Thrilled to see the approval of a Nav1.8 inhibitor for pain. Has anyone tested whether the analgesic effects of suzetrigine and opiates are additive, synergistic, or antagonistic?

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Angie Rasmussen @angierasmussen.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Tests: not enough tests & not fast enough thanks to CDC. New tests might not be authorized by FDA. CDC not tracking data or sharing it. CMS again not covering testing costs. No tests, no detection, no ability to contain the outbreak.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

a health official being quoted in the newspaper saying TB "is a respiratory virus" does not fill me with confidence that the outbreak will be managed competently

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

David & I preparing for electron microscopy class on the JEM-2010F

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John Rubinstein @johnrubinstein.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

We are hosting a cryo-EM grid nanofabrication workshop on 28 April 2025, as part of the Canadian Cryo-EM Nexus (ccemn.ca). Learn how to make holey gold or holey carbon grids in your own laboratory! Space is limited, so please apply at web.cvent.com/event/ee88ac...

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

US government is botching bird flu in the exact same ways the botched COVID. Completely avoidable disaster that the Biden administration sleepwalked straight through.

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

well, OK then, if you say so...

Jiankui He tweet: "Gene editing in human embryo is safe to proceed now" with picture of Dr. He in a lab coat in front of an empty lab

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Every time my lab visits the Stanford Linear Accelerator, there is some hardware catastrophe or power outage or something. I think we bring all our bad luck to California. Better that than keeping it at home, though

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klbr @klbr.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Cleaning out old files and wanted to post this because I got nostalgic: me in grad school with my dear colleague Joanita Jakana in front of the JEM-3200FSC. A good teacher and friend.

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