Dr Liam Brierley

Five persistent “Zombie Facts” that should be allowed to finally die | Sean Slater

'Zombie facts' are myths, ideas and factoids that continue to spread long after they have been comprehensively debunked.

Ecology and environment predict spatially stratified risk of H5 highly pathogenic avian influenza clade 2.3.4.4b in wild birds across Europe - Scientific Reports Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) represents a threat to animal and human health, with the ongoing H5N1 outbreak within the H5 2.3.4.4b clade being one of the largest on record. However, it rem...

🦅 What’s driving the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) across Europe?

Using machine learning and wild bird ecology, a new study from @L_Brierley & colleagues reveals a shift towards year-round risk in cold, low-lying regions of NW Europe.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A study funded through a partnership with CSL Seqirus has been published in Scientific Reports. The research maps #BirdFlu risk across Europe using environmental AND wild bird data. Read more: www.thepandemicinstitute.org/news/study-u... @liambrierley.bsky.social #AvianInfluenza #H5N1

What do epidemic viruses and laughing at stand-up comedy have in common? Dr Liam Brierley is a Research Fellow at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. In today’s guest post, he talks about the value of using comedy as a tool for communicating r…

🎙️🤣 I wrote about why and how researchers should think about comedy as a way of public engagement via @uofgpe.bsky.social!

There's a couple of routes to do this in Glasgow, and if you're interested to see how it works you can come see Bright Club TONIGHT at The Stand! linktr.ee/brightclubsc...

I am ridiculously excited for this next set of Glasgow scicomm comics. This coming Monday!!

Two weeks til 🎙️COMEDIC ACADEMIC🎙️time!! Feat. everything from how much you can electrically stimulate someone to the psychology of stroppy astronauts!

Want to dip your own toe in or hear about scicomm-comedy training? Get on that mailing list! eepurl.com/jr69Zg

👀 also don't miss the discount code⬇️

We've a computational PhD project available AI-DRIVEN DISCOVERY OF VIRUS–HOST MOLECULAR INTERACTIONS www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/mvl... as part of the University of Glasgow's MVLS Futures Themes PhD Programme. Deadline for applications is this Monday, 12th Jan 2026. Please apply!

“Why can’t you be normal?”: an urgent call for social and institutional inclusivity of neurodivergent scientists in STEM workplaces | mBio Autism is a neurodevelopmental phenotype characterized by challenges with socialization (1). Officially classified as an intellectual disability (2), the term “neurodivergent” (antonym: “neurotypical”...

"[neurodivergent] behaviors .. need not be changed for properly functioning research environments and demanding conformity of autistic scientists is actively harmful to their mental health"

Many important and stunningly relatable points in this piece.

journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Spectra of mutation patterns across the influenza A phylogeny are informative of not just differential host adaptation, but differential tissue adaptation too!

Conservation, genomics, ecology, *and* bats all in the same PhD!

Four panel comic, featuring a red fox, a grey cat, and a flying fox Panel 1: Cat: “who are you talking to there?” Fox, holding a phone: “my distant relative in Australia” Panel 2: Fox, speaking from a phone: “say hi to cat!” The face of a fox, upside down: “hi” Panel 3: Cat: “don’t you think it’s a dumb stereotype to draw Australians that way?” Fox: “huh?” Panel 4: Zoomed out view on the upside down fox, revealing that it’s a flying fox so it’s upside down because of this, not because of a joke about Australians being upside down Flying fox: “like what?”

Some things, like foxes, really are upside down in Australia

What makes bird flu spill over to humans? 4y funded PhD in the genomics and molecular virology behind zoonosis of avian influenza A virus, working with @tompeacock.bsky.social and others between Liverpool, Pirbright, and Uppsala!

open to applications until next week!

Some areas of the text also seem formatted in a way less like a research paper and more like, say, a chatbot output..

🚨 2 PhD opportunities under Wessex One Health to join my group & work on:

1. Integrating bat and fungal pathogen ecology to understand epidemiology

2. AI-augmented metagenomics to map British bat virome and assess zoonotic potential

Deadline 26 January 2026 🦇🧪🦠🌍🌐

www.surrey.ac.uk/wessex-one-h...

The absurdity of not being able to use a .gov site as a reliable source anymore.

um, 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺, we call them orthopicobirnaviruses now

Is it something like "by" -> "bystander" -> something like "onlooker" or "watcher" -> the colloquial "peeping Tom" -> further transmogrification?

I have strong memories of an automated plagiarism of a press article about my research into bat virus distributions suggesting we analysed "illnesses of cricket bats"

🏏🤒

Hope we will have many attendees from @royalstatsoc.bsky.social @unisouthampton.bsky.social !

It's Trans Awareness Week and @rssdiversity.bsky.social and @rainbowr.org's event tomorrow! 🏳️‍⚧️

Please join me from 17.30GMT at www.youtube.com/@RSSDiversity (stream will be up on homepage) to hear from Dr Voigt and Dr Webster on data on trans identities, barriers in trans lives, and better advocacy.

My 1st first-author paper is out as a preprint! Excited to share the fascinating story of marine-feeding vampire bats 🌊🦇 We found that marine-diet bats were exposed to #H5#AvianFlu 🦠 from marine wildlife and could potentially spread it to livestock via blood feed🩸
doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.09.686930

Ecology and spread of the North American H5N1 epizootic - Nature The panzootic of highly pathogenic H5N1 since 2021 was driven by around nine introductions into the Atlantic and Pacific flyways, followed by rapid dissemination through wild migratory birds, primaril...

Our lab's paper describing the North American H5N1 epizootic is out now in Nature! So thrilled to have this out, and congratulations to @lambod50.bsky.social for all the fantastic work on this: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@besaldernetwork.bsky.social
@qedmathsnetwork.bsky.social
@lgbtmath.org
@outtoinnovate.bsky.social
@lgbtqstem.bsky.social

Please let me know any other networks we should share this with!

event flyer, see details via http://bit.ly/rsscdnov

rainbowR event: Trans Lived Experiences in Data 🏳️‍⚧️

We are partnering with the
@rssdiversity.bsky.social Celebrating Diversity SIG to host an online event next week. More info below!

📅 19th Nov 17:30–18:30 (GMT)
👉 bit.ly/rsscdnov

TONIGHT! Don't miss out on Glasgow's best* science comedy evening!

* within 95% confidence interval

A collage promoting Bright Club Glasgow. The top left panel features a cartoon blue rubber duck wearing a red-and-white traffic cone as a party hat, with the text "Bright Club Glasgow" on its side. Surrounding this image are five photos of individual stand-up performers on stage with microphones, each speaking animatedly or smiling

Bright Club is back! 

Join us at The Stand Glasgow for a night of laughs as our researchers and academics turn into stand-up comedians.

📅 Mon 10 November 
📍 The Stand, Glasgow 

Get your tickets for £4 using discount code "BRIGHTCLUB": gla.ac/4hivOMZ

Taxonomic expansion and reorganization of Flaviviridae - Nature Microbiology Analysis of RNA polymerase hallmark gene phylogenies supported by protein structure relationships of flaviviruses and ‘flavi-like’ viruses underpins the taxonomic expansion and reorganization of Flavi...

🧬 Thrilled to share our latest paper in @natmicrobiol.nature.com 📄

A collaboration to give the Flaviviridae (home to Zika, Dengue & HCV) a much-needed taxonomic re-think.

Our at-scale AI structure prediction gave a complementary perspective on viral evolution.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...