Ashlee N. Ford Versypt

I was 1 of 2 scheduled speakers in the last contributed talk session at #SMB2025 & the other didn't show. I'm thankful for the 7 engaged audience members consisting of 3 strangers & 4 friends & for see you later hugs I got today. I love the math bio research community that spans the globe.

The Harry Potter reference was great. Another set of two time stamps could've been Feb 2020 to now (or any interval after Mar 2020). We had no idea what Mar 2020 and beyond had in store for us and before/after snapshots hide the trajectories of drama in between

It is sooo useful! We've been applying it to everything spatial biol. Thanks for sharing such a great tool.

John Metzcar & I hosted a minisymposium on Systems Approaches to Cancer Biology at the Society for Mathematical Biology Annual Meeting #SMB2025. 2025.smb.org/ONCO/MS-ONCO...

Speakers: me, Aaron Meyer, Erzsébet Ravasz Regan, & Stacey Finley

We got a door sign for my lab! I never remembered to ask until a staff member recently asked for updates from all the faculty. My hallway has all new lab signs from all the faculty who've joined in the last 6 years. My lab 404 will no longer get "404 not found" messages.

Happy to be working on this dream team project led by Viviana Monje in her NSF RIEF grant on teaching threshold concepts in statistics to ChE using computational notebooks. Matilde Sanchez-Pena and I are co-PIs on the team. Jinhui Li CBE PhD student created the poster & the notebook (QR code).

Throwback to 16.5 years ago at my first Thunder basketball team in the Ford Center during their first season. Oklahoma has loved and supported this team from the beginning. Not just OKC, but the entire state. Awesome for them to win it all at home! #ThunderUp

NBA finals game 7 team spirit in the ChE Division at ASEE!

My MIRA renewal is officially on the SUNY RF social media celebration list. My first grant to be celebrated as "large grant award" in 4.5 years at UB.

Sen P. Murray (vice chair): Proud of NIH progress. This administration is destroying the NIH...

No one is asking for LESS cancer research!

Bethesda Declaration states admins actions are breaking NIH. Heed their warning. None of them should to receive retaliation for this.

Join us in a vigil commemorating the lives and knowledge lost through the NIH cuts. NIH Vigil Saturdays at 10 am, Medical Center Metro, Black attire encouraged. Parking is not available. Feel free to bring a lawn chair.

Feeling burnout from working overtime to keep the government functioning under demoralizing conditions?

Exhausted from job hunting and competing with hundreds of overqualified candidates?

Find community, comfort, and connection at this week’s NIH Vigil! 10 am Saturday, Med Center Metro!

The moral of the story: The math ain't mathin'.

Trump's cuts to science spending will damage our economy, leave hundreds of thousands of people jobless, destroy the discovery pipeline, and most importantly, cost lives.

But we are fighting back.

Join us: www.standupforscience.net/summer-fight...

Cutting the NIH—The $8 Trillion Health Care Catastrophe This JAMA Forum discusses the recent budget cuts to National Institutes of Health (NIH), the effects of these cuts on scientific research and health of individuals in the US, and the prospects for cha...

Viewpoint in JAMA details the consequences of the proposed cuts to NIH:

❌15% reduction in new therapies
❌reduction in life expectancy by 83M life years in the US = $8.2T
❌loss of $51B in economic output annually

All to save $20B annually. The math ain't mathin.'
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

Skilled immigration on the chopping block? Effects of eliminating "Optional Practical Training" in the US The White House has taken numerous steps to sharply reduce the number of immigrant workers, with or without legal status, in the US economy. These policies, so far, typically target immigrants with le...

They're terminating OPT.

Today the nominee to head USCIS stated directly: he will end Optional Practical Training, the single largest channel for high-skill immigrants to work in the US.

6 weeks ago I warned about this & summarized the research on impacts of this drastic action—> @piie.com

Hike 1 of #WNYHikingChallenge at Little Rock City with UB SEAS colleagues before we start the Faculty Launch Mentoring Program writing retreat in Ellicottville.

We celebrate each new MS or PhD grad by taking a pic with all of those who have graduated and left my lab before them. Congratulations Dr. Kru and Tanben, MS. #ubclassof2025

CBE graduates who had UG research experiences in my lab. Congrats JP, Sarita, and Yaman! #ubclassof2025

My PO had reached out in December to tell me it had been recommended for funding at the fall council (Jan 2024 submission). I was not funded until April due to continuing resolution and then the drama. The score is probably only worth comparing within program areas.

I do like the signals of the name Leo XIV

ApplNumComp: An Open Access Introductory Course for Applied Numerical Computing Versypt} et al., (2025). ApplNumComp: An Open Access Introductory Course for Applied Numerical Computing. Journal of Open Source Education, 8(87), 143, https://doi.org/10.21105/jose.00143

My paper with Duncan Mullins on the open source educational materials for Applied Numerical Computing is now published by the Journal of Open Source Education: jose.theoj.org/papers/10.21...

Repository: github.com/ashleefv/App...

Thanks to NSF and CACHE for funding.

I will teach Honors Board Games in the fall as a 1 credit class for 1st engineers! I will serve as a UB Honors Faculty Fellow. They want faculty to share passions & connect into the UB community. It's perfect to connect my love for gaming, source of community & strategic skill development.

Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is proposing a rule to increase career employee accountability. Agency supervisors report great difficulty removing employees for poor performance or misconduc...

SCIENTISTS: The proposed Schedule F is out. It has potential to undermine or destroy merit-based science.

Rules/regulations have the force of law. This rule may put peer review in the hands of political appointees.

Make your public comment here: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Congratulations

This one has been a roller coaster since the reviews came back last July. I'm sooooo thankful that it's at last awarded.

Because they have until their fiscal year budget runs out. Borderline proposals may get funded late in the fiscal year if there is funding left available. Or that's what has been the norm.

No. Anything in the October council has through the entire fiscal year (Oct-Sep) for a decision.

October 2024. This was submitted in the January 2024 cycle.

That's MIT, not BU