Wolfgang Huber

Ascona workshop "Statistical and AI methods for multi-modal multi-scale modeling of biological systems", 28 June - 3 July.

Deadline for registration Mon 16 March, 23:59 CET.
There are ~10-12 places left.

Goes against the domestic politics unfortunately but more events to show Europe really should lean into the economic value of stability

I was sad to learn that my postdoctoral mentor, David Botstein, died yesterday. I started with David as a postdoc in 1998, and he had a profound effect on both my life and scientific career. He was a giant in the field of genetics, making seminal contributions in both yeast and human genetics. 1/

Und für die in Heidelberg: heute Abend Cem Özdemir und Florian Kollmann im Karlstorbahnhof www.gruene-heidelberg.de/termin/town-...

An alle Follower aus BaWü: am 8.3. rausgehen und eine demokratische Partei.wählen.

rOpenSci News Digest, February 2026 AI policy for software review, champions program, coworking, new packages, package news

February @ropensci.org news! 🗞️ #RStats

💙 Strong Engagement in the Champions Program Call

🤔 Policy Updates for use of Generative AI Tools

🚀 Dashboard for your own R-Universe

📆 Coworking

💓 New packages {Athlytics}, {orgmetrics}

🗒️ Blog posts!

🧰 Package Dev Corner

ropensci.org/blog/2026/02...

the complete lack of backbone from numerous - though not all - academic institutions has been one of the biggest disappointments of the Trump 2 era.

Grid explaining how users of several statistics applications/programming languages see one another

kieranhealy.org/blog/archive...

I know I come across as a big fan of Rust, but maybe its time to try `find + mkdir`?

GNU find + mkdir is Turing Complete : arxiv.org/pdf/2602.20762

Russian embassy, Washington DC.

To mark the fourth anniversary of the full scale invasion

Powerpoint slide on what's in and what's out in 2026 What's in includes authoritarianism, nationalism, broligarchy, science denialism, conflicts What's out includes democracy, multilateralism, global solidarity, equity, diversity, respect for human rights, peace

Preparing this slide for a global health lecture this week...

Pretty sad state of affairs in 2026, but that's what we are up against, and that's what we need to plan for and counter

OTD in 2022 Russian warship Moskva was told “go fuck yourself”. A short while later it fucked itself and sank. In a land war. By a country without a navy.

I remain a master strategist.

Next time you doubt you are the right person for a job, remember: Chupa Chups make toothpaste.

Slava Ukraini.

From Fragmented IDEs to One Multilingual Platform: Johnson & Johnson’s Positron Story - Posit Discover how Johnson & Johnson unified its data science workflow. Learn why they transitioned from fragmented IDEs to Positron, a multilingual platform for R and Python development.

Still running R and Python in separate IDEs?

Join our live webinar on March 3 to hear how Johnson & Johnson standardized on one multilingual platform with Positron.

Real enterprise story. Regulated environment.

Secure your spot →
posit.co/webinar/from...

Screenshot of Apple Mail editor trying to be helpful with maths

Apple Mail started to try to be helpful by auto-computing mathematical expressions in an email. The problem is, it is often wrong, e.g., gives a nonsensical number with two decimal points, none of which in the right place.

Weren't computers once good at numbers?
How did we get here?

We're live-watching the 21st century version of authoritarian propaganda. Facebook, of course, was the pioneer.
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

20th century totalitarians had to do with newspapers, radio, TV.

Deadline: 28 Feb!

Join us for this workshop with @petinozappala.bsky.social
Details+registration: www.imseam.uni-heidelberg.de/en/heinzelma...
#Philosophy #philsci #ethics #politics

Tirol

A scientist and a mountain

Tirol, with 9yo and 7yo

We have to stop calling some jobs ‘low skilled’ Freeing ourselves of these labels might help young people to think more creatively about the future

“Economists have contributed to this with their habit of describing certain jobs as “high skilled” (and other jobs as “low skilled”) when what they actually mean is “jobs that require skills that the market currently values highly””

www.ft.com/content/0409...

The most accurate analysis of the transatlantic dynamics at MSC I’ve seen so far:

America’s Future Is Hungary MAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished.

Remember: Viktor Orban has built a corrupt, stagnant Hungary that is much poorer than it should be

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

It might be worth mentioning and comparing the roles of the Science Media Centres a number of countries have established?

New Zealand, the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, Germany, Spain, Taiwan all have SMCs.

There is an International SMC Network.

Two survival curves. One ('late') goes all the way down, the other ('early') stays well above it all the way and bottoms out at like 30%

This is just nuts.
In a well-powered randomised trial, giving immunotherapy in the morning rather than afternoon/evening produced ludicrously big improvements in progression-free survival
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
via
www.science.org/content/blog...

AI is really making progress but we still can’t search our emails and drives usefully.

The European Onion is a joke whose time has come A new model of European integration, without the tears

Talk in Europe now is a "two-speed EU" or Coalitions of the Willing.

My Charlemagne this week is on how to turn the European Union into the European Onion—a multi-layered construct with a core and outer tiers.

Unity still matters. Getting stuff done matters more.

www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

Challenges for open ecosystems as "first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild...raises serious concerns about agents executing blackmail threats" theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...

Screenshot of Job Ad

EMBL site in Heidelberg

Zurich, incl. a bit of UZH/USZ

Job offer: PhD-level biostatistician with ML&omics experience to work on prediction models for CAR T cell therapy, in an exciting clinical trial - spatial omics - data science consortium (LOOP/INTeRCePT3.0 centered in Zurich; this position in Heidelberg)

embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/EMBL/j...

Fascinating