iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

And how will AI solve this problem? Will it create humans with magic hands? Or will it identify nonsensical patterns that burn more fuel? Hmm.

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

🎶It's beginning to smell a lot like pencils...🎶 Happy Fall Semester to all who celebrate 🧪 #AcademicSky

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

"The Trump administration hates academic science funding, full stop. They hate where that money goes, and they hate who it goes to. They want to keep all that money for themselves, to hand out to favored cronies". Yuuup! 🧪

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Yes, the administrators with their giant salaries seem less invested in the fight. Funny that

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

The Haricharan lab is hiring! We're looking for a postdoc to join us in sunny San Diego on our beautiful campus @sdsurf.bsky.social. You'll be studying how a person's life experiences can affect their tumor biology and response to tx. Apply here. careers-sdsurf.icims.com/jobs/20659/p... 🧪

careers-sdsurf.icims.com

Prospective Employees | SDSU

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

When did we stop requiring moral clarity from our leaders and started lauding their pragmatism instead? If we can't expect moral clarity from academic leaders, the rot runs deep

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Reposted by Svasti Haricharan

Michael Hoffman @michaelhoffman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

The other alternatives to believing the score is biased is that to believe that: - that "exceptional" manuscripts are more likely to be by men or - the score does not really measure "exceptional" manuscripts Which is it?

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Last year I proposed at faculty meeting that as a Biology dept we should make critical thinking part of our UG and grad school curriculum. I was told students could take philosophy to get that content. We need to be teaching our students critical thinking now www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

insidehighered.com

We Have Never Taught Critical Thinking (opinion)

AI just makes those failures evident.

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

"Louis Pasteur said that chance “favors only the prepared mind.” Public money pays for the trained person, the prepared mind, to be paying attention when a lucky accident happens." www.nytimes.com/2026/06/20/o... 🧪 1/4

nytimes.com

Opinion | The Science That Turned Lizard Venom Into GLP-1s Is Under Attack

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Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽 @needhibhalla.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

"a black presidency is a contradiction—it owes its power to a movement against racist state violence at home but seeks an office which has always practiced racist state violence abroad... no paywall: archive.ph/SSLbJ#select...

archive.ph

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

US will serve as negative control

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

"The vagueness of what actually constitutes “DEI” has allowed the administration to lean on its most potent tool, the self-censorship of the scientific community." So true. Our premature capitulation is something we will look back on with regret and shame, I suspect. Or at least some of us. 🧪

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Not that different from status quo maybe 🧪

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

This is so interesting to me given I've heard multiple industry people tell me they can't trust academia

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of... Please comment here www.federalregister.gov/documents/20... if you want science in the US to NOT be destroyed. Open for comments till July 13th, so spread the word 🧪

elizabethginexi.substack.com

Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule

Russell Vought is going to destroy American Science

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Reposted by Svasti Haricharan

Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

While BioNtech & Moderna become household names because of their Covid vaccines, those emerged from different projects: finding ways to treat the most challenging cancers. They hypothesized that we could vaccinate patients against their own tumors, & evidence is mounting that they were right! 1/n 🧪

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-10004-2
Individualized mRNA vaccines evoke durable T cell immunity in adjuvant TNBC

U. Sahin, M. Schmidt, E. Derhovanessian, A. Cortini, I. Vogler, T. Omokoko, E. Godehardt, S. Attig, S. Newrzela, J. Grützner, N. Bidmon, S. Bolte, S. Brachtendorf, T. Stuhlmann, D. Langer, D. Brüne, J. Blake, A. Feldner, H. Lindman, A. Schneeweiss, M. Eichbaum & Ö. Türeci
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is frequently associated with metastatic relapse, even at an early stage1. Here we assessed an individualized neoantigen mRNA vaccine in 14 patients with TNBC following surgery and after neoadjuvant or adjuvant therapy. In peripheral blood of nearly all patients, high-magnitude, vaccine-induced, mostly de novo T cell responses to multiple neoantigens were detected that remained functional for several years. Characterization of individual patients revealed that a large proportion of these T cells developed into two subsets: a late-differentiated phenotype with markers indicative of ‘ready-to-act’ cytotoxic effector T cells, and T cells with a stem cell-like memory phenotype. Eleven patients remained relapse-free for up to six years post-vaccination. Recurrence occurred in three patients: the individual with the weakest vaccine-induced T cell response relapsed, but achieved complete remission on subsequent anti-PD-1 therapy; another patient had a tumour with low major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I expression with MHC class I-deficient cells growing out under vaccination; and the third patient was BRCA-positive and had a recurrence from a genetically distinct primary tumour. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of individualized RNA vaccines in TNBC, document persistence of vaccine-induced, functional neoantigen-specific T cells and provide insights into possible immune escape mechanisms that will guide future approaches.

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Really surprised and disappointed to see these analyses of American reading habits. The top 4% of readers read almost half the total number of books read by Americans last year. That is crazy. 40% of Americans read 0 books last year (this includes listening to audiobooks. yougov.com/en-us/articl...

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Academic freedom nosediving is an important bellwether of the erosion of a people's right to knowledge, education and upward mobility

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Shout out from @sdsuresearch.bsky.social on our recent paper looking at subcellular localization of proteins ss a sometimes overlooked high potential avenue for cancer biomarker discovery. Finding the right patient for the tx is a battle that continues to be fought www.sdsu.edu/news/2026/04... 🧬🧪

sdsu.edu

Study uncovers potential cancer treatment that is readily available | News | SDSU

SDSU researchers have identified a solution to reduce mortality in the deadliest type of breast cancer

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Just read on the NIH funding blog about how centralized NIH peer review is strengthening efficiency, competition and transparency. grants.nih.gov/news-events/... Thinking of beginning a research line into alternate universes to answer the q "Am I high or are they high" #AcademicSky 🧬

grants.nih.gov

One Year Later: How Centralized NIH Peer Review is Strengthening Efficiency, Competition, and Transparency | Grants & Funding

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Huge shout out to my postdoc, Dr. Tyler DeWitt #notonhere for an outstanding talk at #AACR2026 yesterday. He presented our story on the molecular underpinnings of breast cancer outcome disparities (currently in revision in Cancer Research @aacrjournals.bsky.social) with panache #breastcancer 🧪

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Every day I talk to other cancer researchers, committed to soldiering on as long as poss, but many of us see the writing on the wall & cannot help but be despondent. Pharma co.s otoh are happy to tell us that if we cannot make breakthroughs, they'll take ones from China. So there's that, I suppose.🧪

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Everything happened because of someone else (unconnected to POTUS), he is a disinterested scientist only motivated by a love of humanity, butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. The absence of any attempt at taking ownership of the debacle that is American research today was appalling to watch

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

I read this piece, and I'm not going to lie, it is deeply shocking to think that we have gone so far off the rails that we can think and write and publish that the main purpose of a graduate student is to "be productive" on day 1.

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

"Sometimes what you need is a front-loaded award ... so it's perfectly scientifically justified" The lies upon lies, the misdirection, the prevarication, it's exhausting, no wonder he doesn't sleep

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

So, his claim is that the payline going down from 30% to <10% is because scientists are submitting more applications? Bro with some circular thinking here. I wish House reps were better educated in the how research funding works so they could push back against rank deceit 🧪

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

donmoynihan.substack.com/p/american-b... The really sad thing is that a lot of scientists have also fallen for the Merchants of Doubt strategy and I hear many colleagues complain that science has become political, revealing a deep lack of understanding of how they have been manipulated themselves 🧪

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

If you'd like to work on this gorgeous campus with my lab, consider applying here: careers-sdsurf.icims.com/jobs/20123/r... We're looking for someone to join us as a tech and grow into a lab manager position. To learn more about the lab: www.haricharanlab.com 🧪

aacrjournals.org

Immigration and social factors, tumor stage, and risk of contralateral breast cancer in Asian American and Hispanic women

Abstract. Background: Risk of contralateral breast cancer (CBC) is higher in Asian American and Hispanic breast cancer survivors than in non-Hispanic White survivors. We investigated the role of immig...

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Reposted by Svasti Haricharan

Dr. Arun Sethuraman @arunsethuraman.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Gorgeous recent sunset from our beautiful Spanish revival campus (pic from SDSU’s LinkedIn page). Too pretty to not share! ❤️

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

For me, it's wrapping my head around the kind of tech bro who dreams of a world where humans don't have to think .....

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Reposted by Svasti Haricharan

Linda Holmes @lindaholmes.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Another tough day for team “there’s no point in complaining about AI, just accept it.”

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Now they've posted it on their website, so no backsies 😂

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

"The questions leftists ask about AI are: does this improve my life? Does this improve my livelihood? So far, the answer for everyone who doesn’t stand to get rich off AI is no." Spot on. Spending a bunch of money to build something that helps noone. Why, though? aftermath.site/anthropic-cl...

aftermath.site

The Left Doesn't Hate Technology, We Hate Being Exploited

Techno-cynics are all just wounded techno-optimists.

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Asona Lui @ucsdhealthsci.bsky.social and I @sdsuresearch.bsky.social are PIs on one of those three funded applications! Our research is going clinical 😍😅🥳🧪 [I'll do a 🧵on how taxpayer $$ directly contributed to this shortly] #ShareGoodNewsToo

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Alejandro Montenegro @aemonten.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

But it does it quickly and congratulates you for asking

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

The erosion of the peer review process at the NIH is not just with the push back against in-person study sections, which I think are qualitatively superior to zoom sections. There were also in the last set of meetings: compression to 1 day meetings, and no chair summaries. Both comprise quality imo

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Related but separate. I teach critical thinking and we talk about how telling someone they're wrong because facts, seldom works. But showing someone patterns that they can recognize in mis/disinformation empowers them to figure out for themselves which sources they can trust for information.

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

Hard agree. I created a Critical Thinking curriculum for our grad students because they craved that content. These are bright kids. Watching them kick ass once they grasp how to reason critically is amazing. But I shouldn't be the one seeing that transformation. That should be happening in school

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

100% this. That means the Cancer Biology class I teach is also partly a how to be a Biology student class. That means I can't teach all the cancer biology I want to because there's no point teaching intense biology concepts if we're struggling with the how to learn successfully question

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Joel Boerckel @jboerckel.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

The NIH has indicated a “leniency” period for implementation of the Common Forms (SciENcv) May 2026: grants.nih.gov/faqs#/common... Note: the “warning” that says your materials are not in compliance is also displayed if you submit using the Common Forms. This warning can be ignored.

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

It is ok to vote against making the middle third competitive if you haven't read those applications and therefore cannot really assess their competitiveness. They require a simple majority so make sure to ask clarifying questions before the first vote and then request a head count after the vote.

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SDSU Research Foundation @sdsurf.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

@sandiegostate.bsky.social recently hosted the SDSU Cancer Research Symposium, where cancer researchers, private-sector executives, advocates, and community organizations gathered to envision the future of cancer research at the university. Read the full story: tiny.cc/6eyx001

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

This should be said more often. The problem is not that the research that is funded isn't good, it's that we don't have the funding to fund all of the outstanding research ideas presented to us. ROI for NIH science funding is almost 2$ per $ spent. I'd like to see AI tech compete with that

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Svasti Haricharan @svasti.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Also, to get to the truly difficult-to-answer questions in a discipline, you have to steep yourself in the field for quite a while before you appreciate what we know, what we don't know, and what we know we don't know. True discovery takes time, and is a group project

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Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽 @needhibhalla.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

“We cannot pursue our mission to improve the health and well-being of all Americans while DHS agents are murdering, assaulting, and terrorizing people who call this country home…We believe ICE and CBP are a greater threat to the health of our nation than the lapse of HHS services.”

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