iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Often debates about education are framed as non-tech versus AI approaches, but too often, AI ed tech just magnifies the same failures of traditional school. 1/ My latest post: www.fast.ai/posts/2026-0...

fast.ai

fast.ai - I Don’t Want a Learning Dashboard for My Child

What analog and AI education both get wrong

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Vibe coding is the creation of large quantities of complex AI-generated code. Executives push lay-offs claiming AI can handle the work. Managers pressure employees to meet quotas of how much code must be AI-generated... yet results are far from what was promised 1/ www.fast.ai/posts/2026-0...

fast.ai

Breaking the Spell of Vibe Coding – fast.ai

Sinister variations on the positive state of flow

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Scott H. Hawley @drscotthawley.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

I had great experiences with close reading as part of this course last fall and using the solveit platform (though you can do it with other platforms, just maybe not as easily. ;-))

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Close reading is a technique for careful analysis of a piece of writing, practiced by many ancient cultures, major religions, & academic scholars. The latest fastai course experimented with using AI to go deeper when reading. 1/ www.fast.ai/posts/2026-0...

fast.ai

How To Use AI for the Ancient Art of Close Reading – fast.ai

Experiments in reading with LLMs

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Reposted by Rachel Thomas

Alex Crits-Christoph @acritschristoph.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

A great blog post by @math-rachel.bsky.social on this preprint describing failures of an ML approach for gene annotation: rachel.fast.ai/posts/2025-0... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... "how challenging (or even impossible) it can be to evaluate AI claims in work outside our own area of expertise"

rachel.fast.ai

Rachel Thomas, PhD - Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored

an AI researcher going back to school for immunology

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Two (conflicting) executive orders were made this week: - freeze on comms from scientific & health agencies - investment in medical AI w/ bold promises These highlight common misunderstandings & obfuscations about the relationship between data, AI, & power My post rachel.fast.ai/posts/2025-0... 1/

rachel.fast.ai

Rachel Thomas, PhD - The Missing Medical Data Holding Back AI

an AI researcher going back to school for immunology

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

What AI can tell us about microscope slides: classifying cancer cells, predicting prognosis, and identifying genetic mutations that may drive treatment choices. My latest post is a friendly introduction to Foundation Models for Computational Pathology: rachel.fast.ai/posts/2025-0... 1/

rachel.fast.ai

Rachel Thomas, PhD - What AI can tell us about microscope slides

an AI researcher going back to school for immunology

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

"With LLMs the main uses are to produce outputs that are extremely similar to the training set. But the point of computational drug design is to deal with cases that are new... Copying from what we know already will only get you so far." -- @dereklowe.bsky.social www.science.org/content/blog...

science.org

Computational Care

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Nature Method of the year for 2020 was Spatial Transcriptomics and for 2024 it is Spatial Proteomics. Sounds like this is the decade for spatial -omics!

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Single cell profiling obscures profound spatial heterogeneity. Even if these 4 samples had the same proportions of cell types, the spatial arrangement is vastly different. @lochlanfennell.bsky.social #multiomics2024 1/

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Spatial biomarkers are associated with immunotherapy response & can help treatment decision making Tumor cell subtyping of non-small cell lung cancer found 5 distinct tumor clusters which differed in outcomes -- Ettai Markovits of NucleAI kicking off computational bio session #multiomics2024 1/

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Role of viruses in triggering Type 1 Diabetes: - viruses theorised as trigger of islet autoimmunity - both cases & controls show peptides unique to them - differential immune response to same viruses - Rather than infection with a specific virus, may be triggered by how the immune system responds

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Reposted by Rachel Thomas

Amy McCart Reed @amymccart.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Forget livetweeting we are now live illustrating!!!! #headandneck #multiomics2024

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Many cancers have multiple oncogenes. Does it matter if they are in the same cell or not? -- Anand Jeyesekaran kicking off the Immuno-Oncology session for #multiomics2024 🧵 1/

Summary part 1

Sub-populations of cells have distinct combinations of oncogenes:

In DLBCL, MYC+BCL2+BCL6-cells have the strongest impact on survival

BCL6 negativity is important to assess (possible role of CCND2)

A single-cell resolved definition of DEL lymphoma as a "continuum"; extrapolatable from IHC images

Does this phenomenon (clinically relevant co-expression of oncogenes in a subset of cells) occur in other cancers?

CSI SINGAPORE

CANCER SCIENCE INSTITUTE OF SINGAPORE National University of Singapore

Hoppe et al, Cancer Discovery 2023

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Patterns of Oncogene Coexpression at Single-Cell Resolution Influence Survival in Lymphoma

AACR JOURNALS

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

We need to consider the "cell sociology" of the direct communications of cancer cells, the regions & neighborhoods, and the broader tumor microenvironment. -- Angela Ferguson 1/ 🧵 from #multiomics2024

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David Shaywitz @dshaywitz.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Such an interesting read from @math-rachel.bsky.social who has a remarkable gift for making complex topics (like AI ∩ immunology) accessible as well as engaging -> rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-0... #biosky #medsky

rachel.fast.ai

Rachel Thomas, PhD - AI’s Quest to Predict T Cell Binding– The Holy Grail of Immunology

an AI researcher going back to school for immunology

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

This year I focused on how AI is being applied to immunology. These applications include predicting T cell binding, mapping immune communication networks, and discovering new antibiotics. Here is a round-up of my writing on AI + Immunology: rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-1... 1/

rachel.fast.ai

Rachel Thomas, PhD - AI and Immunology

an AI researcher going back to school for immunology

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

The human immune system is impressive, but so are the mechanisms pathogens use to evade it. In my new post, I cover 5 surprising and ingenious ways that viruses & bacteria can subvert our defenses. 1/ rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-1...

rachel.fast.ai

Rachel Thomas, PhD - 5 Devious Tricks Pathogens Use Against Us

an AI researcher going back to school for immunology

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 20/02/2024

Hype around AI in medicine often ignores two key risks: - patterns of automation contribute to centralization of power - medical knowledge is limited by the systemic refusal to trust patient expertise rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-0...

rachel.fast.ai

Rachel Thomas, PhD - “AI will cure cancer” misunderstands both AI and medicine

an AI researcher going back to school for immunology

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Rachel Thomas @math-rachel.bsky.social · 09/01/2024

Even though my main interests are immunology & AI, I was pleasantly surprised to learn several fascinating facts about insects in my microbiology classes last semester! rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-0...

rachel.fast.ai

Rachel Thomas, PhD - 4 Things I Learned About Bugs

an AI researcher going back to school for immunology

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