Ewan Birney

Congratulations, Lisa Maier and Stephen Cusack!

The two EMBL alumni have received the 2026 John Kendrew and Lennart Philipson awards for their outstanding contributions to host–microbiome research and structure-guided drug development, respectively.

Learn more: www.embl.org/news/awards-...

Good morning Bermuda! Very honoured to be the inaugural recipient of the Bermuda Principles award tomorrow

Do apply (note the deadline of April 11th) and you can reach out to @juliosaezrod.bsky.social, the head of EMBL-EBI research for an informal chat

We're also on the same campus as @sangerinstitute.bsky.social who is our strategic partner and another rich source of collaborations across at scale genomics, genetics, single cell genomics, perturbations and synthesis.

EMBL's science is varied - from atoms to ecosystems and has access to world leading technology, in particular in imaging, as well as innovative experimentalists working across cells, tissues (engineered or natural) organisms and ecosystems. It is a rich source of collaborations for AI and ML

@ebi.embl.org is based just south of Cambridge, UK; students to EBI groups are registered at Cambridge. We're part of @embl.org - with truly cutting edge science happening across the 5 other sites at EMBL and a huge desire to work with computational biologists

We're looking for new faculty @ebi.embl.org; we can hire at an early stage in people's career and we're not looking for the finished article on interview - rather we are looking for potential to grow into a leader. The most important part of the application is the research vision

Are you a computational postdoc or even in the last year of your PhD and you want to set up your own lab? Want to work in one of the most multi-disciplinary and multi-national institutions in the world? Want to be a leader in understanding biology - molecules up? Apply below!

Cheers Ewan! Was very glad to see our protein structure predictions get into EBI AFDB! Open databases FTW!

BioAIrepo: EMBL-EBI’s hub for life science AI models New EMBL-EBI repository helps researchers share and reuse machine learning models trained on life science data.

📢 We want your feedback on our new pilot project for sharing AI models in life science research.

Finding, reusing and citing machine learning models remains a major challenge in the life sciences.

BioAIrepo is here to help.

www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/t...

Great work Zam.

I should have said, this takes us to about 2.8 million genomes in total. We don't have annotations, etc for the latest data yet, this will be an ongoing process

Mentoring doesn’t just shape careers, it shapes people’s lives.

Our Director Emeritus Janet Thornton shares with @natmethods.nature.com what mentoring has meant during her career.

💬 What’s the most valuable mentoring advice you’ve received or shared?

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

AlphaFold Database welcomes community datasets Latest AlphaFold Database update adds high-value datasets for microbial and viral proteins, generated by specialist communities

The AlphaFold Database, jointly developed with Google DeepMind, now contains datasets from specialist communities.

This includes rich datasets for microbes, viruses & parasites associated with tropical diseases.

Explore the new datasets in the AlphaFold Database.

www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/u...

It would be great to get more countries on the same plot, UK, DE, FR all would be interesting...

Interested in pursuing a PhD at EMBL-EBI?
@atsocf.bsky.social 🇮🇹 is one of our PhD fellows. He works on improving #AlphaFold protein structure predictions.

Find out more about his PhD experience:
www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/p...

Well played Scotland. Completely deserved to win that game.

The little fish that could. Today sees the publication of a long awaited paper from my group. This has been.

Super cool work on medaka by @ewanbirney.bsky.social and colleagues www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

Includes an excellent summary from Ewan via linkedin... and I maintain that 'humans aren't special' 😊 www.linkedin.com/pulse/little...

Oh Arsenal. Time dig deep and not get set back.

Yesterday the UK Government published a data provision notice paving the way for coded GP data in England to be shared with consented cohorts like UK Biobank.

Hear from Val, a UK Biobank participant on her hopes for the future.

Only a week left to apply for the 'Structural characterisation of macromolecular complexes' course at EMBL Grenoble! Learn about the strategic use of cutting-edge protein structure prediction methods and recent advances in in situ structural biology. 🧬 #EMBOMacromolecular

s.embl.org/mmo26-01-bl

You cut quite a dash - then and now :)

This is just great to see. The ~1/3rd of UK BioBank with GP data already shows the utility but going across the entire dataset will allow far more insights - a reminder that UK BioBank participants have generously consented for their data to be used for research outcomes.

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

Cloud clearing from the Nekar valley around Heidelberg on this icy morning

It has been two weeks since the unexpected death of Peer Bork, and all of us in his research group are deeply missing him. His scientific vision brought us together as a team, and we are immensely grateful for the time we spent together. 🧵

Research Group Leader Do you want to lead groundbreaking research in computational biology? Join us at EMBL-EBI! EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) is seeking talented and highly-motivated scientists to jo...

We are hiring for group leaders again — EBI is a great place to start your research group!

embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/EMBL/job/Hin...

EMBL & CNR have renewed their MoU, reinforcing long-term science collaboration. This was followed by the CNR President’s visit to the CNR-EMBL Rome premises.

These milestones align strategies to support the continued development of the campus and its community.

Good morning beautiful Heidelberg

Excited to share that we’ve received an ERC Proof of Concept grant 🎉. This support will help translate our ERC funded research on developing advanced Brillouin imaging tools into real-world applications. Grateful to @erc.europa.eu and @embl.org and to my amazing lab that's behind the work!