iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

I am getting e-mails like this. Clearly written with the help of AI. Once I wrote back and then got a new science question written by AI with no real connection to my note. Anyone else getting such emails? Curious how the scam works. The transition to give me money, etc is hard to envision.

An email that says:

Dear Dr. Zimmerman,

I came across your work while thinking about how easily people treat molecular recognition as if it were just one molecule fitting another.

Your work on synthetic hosts, dendrimers, and self-assembly made me wonder if the harder idea is that recognition only becomes powerful when it can be turned into behavior, structure, or function that remains useful beyond the first binding event.

What is the misunderstanding you would most want to correct first: that recognition mainly means strong binding, or that self-assembly simply happens once the pieces fit?

Warmly,
Amy

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Could be straight out of Der Stürmer but it’s 2026 and these are mainstream outlets. Disgusting and disturbing.

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Brett Helms @bretthelms.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Collab led by Shira Haber, Nicodemo Ciccia, & Zhengxing Peng with F. Yang, Julia Im, Mutian Hua, Sophia Fricke, R. Giovine, Cheng Wang, John Hartwig, & Jeffrey Reimer @departmentofenergy.bsky.social funded @molecularfoundry.lbl.gov @berkeleylab.lbl.gov @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social @als.lbl.gov

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

@lemcoffgroupbgu.bsky.social group outing to Yeruham. Wonderful day hiking in the desert and visiting the Pinto Winery

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

We are smiling but having to say goodbye to the awesome Shira Haber as she starts her academic career at Bar Ilan University. @lemcoffgroupbgu.bsky.social

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

My last three students at Illinois. Congratulations to Dr. Joel Roberts, Dr. Nafisa Ibrahim (co-advised by @jrl-electrochem.bsky.social), and Astarte Abbott. Three amazing students with a bright careers ahead!

Prof Steve Zimmerman in black cap and gown flanked by three students in blue cap and gowns standing in front of red brick building. All three graduates are holding their diplomas.

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JRL EChem Lab @ Illinois @jrl-electrochem.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

You beat us to the post 🥳 An absolute pleasure to work with Nafisa over these years! Pretty soon we will share her work on redox-active polymers!

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Congratulations to ZGroup and RodriguezGroup student Nafisa Ibrahim on passing her PhD defense. Super proud of this amazing scientist and wonderful person! 🥳🤩👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Professors Joaquin Lopez Rodriguez and Steven Zimmerman standing on either side of Nafisa Ibrahim. All three smiling.

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Lisa Jarvis @lisamjarvis.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

The irony of my column on a promising new data on personalized mRNA-based vaccine for pancreatic cancer coming out the same day that Iowa gets closer to banning "gene-based vaccines" is not lost on me. gift link:

bloomberg.com

Cancer Vaccine Shows Hope. Make the Investment.

Success requires investing in the kind of foundational research that becomes the basis for breakthroughs.

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Whether there is another election or not may well be irrelevant. Good chance they will have firm control of the election machinery by then so the dear leader can win in a popular landslide.

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

An organic reaction that is both interesting and highly useful.

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Matthieu Sollogoub @msollogoub.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Here is a tentative Supramolecular Chemistry starter kit. Please let me know if you wish to be added ! #ChemSky go.bsky.app/RjRgi6n

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Heartbreaking day in Israel as Shiri Bibas and her two sons Kfir and Ariel are buried in a single coffin. 😢

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Esther Johnston @estherjohnston.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

In our #ChemSci Pick of the Week today, Barry Carpenter argues that the "allowed" and "forbidden" classifications for electrocyclic reactions should be abandoned, based on NEVPT2 and DFT calculations. Judge the evidence for yourself #ChemSky #CompChemSky 🧪! Read it free: doi.org/10.1039/D4SC...

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Great talk by Gabi Lemcoff showing how solid solution synthesis produces latent metathesis catalysts.

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Exciting time in Jerusalem - my first ICS meeting.

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Katie Langin @klangin.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Thanks to everyone who shared this request. We updated our new Trump Tracker blog today with the voices of some federal scientists who reached out. More to come. www.science.org/content/arti...

science.org

Trump Tracker: Firings, lawsuits and U.S. science in chaos

Follow President Donald Trump’s impact on U.S. research and science globally

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Clinton Bailey, Who Documented a Vanishing Bedouin Culture, Dies at 88. What an amazing life! A series of chance meetings, including Ben Gurion's wife, and a curious nature leads to the extraordinarily important task of documenting Bedouin life. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/w...

nytimes.com

Clinton Bailey, Who Documented a Vanishing Bedouin Culture, Dies at 88

Armed with a camera and tape recorder, he spent decades preserving the ancient traditions of nomadic Middle Eastern tribes.

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Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · 08/02/2025

Another assault on US competitiveness at a time when biomedicine is roaring with innovation, an own-goal in a high-stakes international tournament. Of course the real losers are American people needing medicines and cures. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

washingtonpost.com

NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately

The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease.

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Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 07/02/2025

Black excellence: Twice as qualified, half as respected, and still passed over or labeled as a ‘DEI hire.’ Black folks have always known this because we’ve seen it happen to our own family members. I know I have.

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

So sad. The retreat from excellence by a private foundation signals just how much the fear of these people is driving behavior.

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Lindsey R. F. Backman @lbackman.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Only a couple years ago I learned that the structure of the alpha helix was solved by Herman Branson, a Howard professor who was doing a sabbatical with Pauling at the time, despite initial pushback from Pauling and Corey that his proposed helix model was much too tight. #BlackHistoryMonth

Picture of Herman Branson standing in front of equipment in his lab.

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Fors Group @forsgroup.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Oh my 2,3-dihydrofuran, I don’t know know any monomer cooler than Thee. Your cyclic vinyl ether, Makes thermosetting so much easier For me: You ROMP in the dark, Crosslink in the light, Recycle to monomer under vacuum overnight. Degrade in acid or with a lot of O2, Oh DHF this is an ode to you.

nature.com

Degradable thermosets via orthogonal polymerizations of a single monomer - Nature

Degradable thermoset multimaterials can be synthesized from a commercially accessible, biosourced monomer using orthogonal polymerizations in a single pot; after selective degredation, the resulting s...

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

Crying or laughing emoji just won’t work but this is definitely why I’m here for BlueSky

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Physical organic chemists - is there a good (non textbook) collected series of graduate-level problems on pericyclic reactions? Looking for problems involving mechanisms, stereochemistry, and application of W-H, FMO, and Zimmerman methods.

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Cousin-in-law with a beautiful home in the Hollywood hills had to evacuate yesterday. Just learned his house/neighborhood was spared. Sympathies to all who were not so lucky.

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Sharon Shavitt @sharonshavitt.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Very cool finding. Would love to see cross-cultural comparisons of human groups. Which cultures would come closest to beating the ants?

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

Great to meet Dr. Aoon Rizvi @aoonr.bsky.social a former undergraduate student in my group. Managed to catch-up with Aoon in my old office at UIUC. From bombing my first orgo exam to doing well in the class, talking his way into my group, UCI PhD, and Stanford PD his slope keeps rising 💫

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Lena Steckelberg @lenasteckelberg.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Hi Bluesky, just in time for the holidays I am excited to share the latest pre-print from my group! We solved the 3D structure of a mysterious viral RNA that resists degradation by host nucleases. A short 🧵 &link below – please also check out the full video! #RNA #RNAbiology #RNASky #lovevirology

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

Admission: I often have weird and creative dreams but latest was next level. I was having lunch with my Provost who in this case apparently was a historian because she told me that she discovered that Hitler had a middle name. He was Adolf L. Hitler! No didn’t find out what L stood for.

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

This is an excellent piece on how to think and speak about LLMs / AI. Wide span of metaphors (and intelligence), from “role players that can imitate many different characters” to “stochastic parrots” and “autocomplete on steroids”

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Great thread on the “jellyfish memory enhancement supplement” Prevagen. Always laughed at the ads where a middle aged man speaks with an exaggerated level of enunciation and deliberateness as though that reflects enhanced memory.

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Someone asked me why when geese fly in a V formation one side of the V is longer. The answer is simple. The longer side of the V has one or more geese on it than does the shorter side.

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Thanks for getting this in my feed. Great story.

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

“This breakthrough utilizes reduced atmospheric pressure allowing liquids to evaporate at low temperatures. That vapor is then condensed and collected in a receiving flask. As a result, you can capture and preserve an amazing array of even highly volatile aromas and flavors to use in your dishes...”

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Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

This is just so beautiful. We are moving into the future of angstrom scale in situ structural biology. This wonderful molecular machine - seen in all its glory here - is responsible for providing the energy that loads neurotransmitters that allow us to think.

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David K Smith @professor-dave.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

A year ago, I published a major review on supramolecular gels. It was rejected by the journal that commissioned it, with referees saying it wasn't worth publishing, and ended up in a low-IF (<4) journal. I'm vindicated to see that in <12 months, it's been cited 35 times. pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

pubs.rsc.org

Supramolecular gels – a panorama of low-molecular-weight gelators from ancient origins to next-generation technologies

Supramolecular gels, self-assembled from low-molecular-weight gelators (LMWGs), have a long history and a bright future. This review provides an overview of these materials, from their use in lubricat...

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Abhishek Chatterjee @achemsynbio.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Got the chance to put together the "Click of Chemical Biologists" starter pack v1 and v2 over the Thanksgiving Break. Feel free to ping me on who else I might be missing! V1: go.bsky.app/3P5i7nJ V2: go.bsky.app/Cr4ej7

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Cranberry sauce does not have to have ridges… #ChemistsWhoCook

A ceramic bowl with cranberries and apricots in a fruit sauce

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 21/11/2024

"If a woman doesn't look woman enough to a Republican, they want to be able to inspect your genitals to use a bathroom? It's disgusting. Everyone should reject it completely... they're endangering women, they're endangering girls of all kind, and everyone should reject it. It's gross." - AOC

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Brittany Trang @brittanytrang.com · 20/11/2024

There are two really cool #PFAS / #foreverchemicals degradation papers out in Nature today In one, the authors show that powdered Teflon can be transformed into charcoal+fluoride with light+a catalyst+reducing reagent & some very important help from mainly KOH and Cs formate This is bonkers cool:

nature.com

Photocatalytic low-temperature defluorination of PFASs - Nature

Photocatalysis at 40–60 °C is shown to be able to defluorinate perfluoroalkyl substances, known as ‘forever chemicals’, allowing the recycling of fluorine in polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substan...

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Steve Zimmerman @steveczimmerman.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

💯 To really replace the old site Bluesky #Chemsky needs to become a lot more diverse

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Ewa Pastorczak @ewapastorczak.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

I haven't found a pack for Women in Science yet so I'm making one. Write if you want to be added (or removed)! Rather small ATM. #WomeninChemistry #WomeninScience #WomeninSTEM go.bsky.app/LjumNEg

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