Siavash Ahrar

not now, highly aggressive infected monkeys

These are beautiful photos !

Promotional graphic for a special issue of Disease Models & Mechanisms titled "In Vitro Models of Human Disease to Inform Mechanism and Drug Discovery." The left side of the image contains text announcing the call for papers, edited by Vivian Li, Austin Smith, and Joseph Wu, with a submission deadline of 3 November 2025. The right side features a vibrant, microscopic image of biological tissue or cell structures in vivid pink, blue, and yellow hues, representing the complexity of in vitro disease models. The design combines scientific detail with visual appeal to attract submissions for the issue.

Call for papers: In Vitro Models of Human Disease to Inform Mechanism and Drug Discovery

Deadline approaching: Monday 3 November 2025

journals.biologists.com/dmm/pages/in...

#Biology #Research #Disease #Discovery #Organoids #Tumours #Gastruloids #Assembloids

Why is windows ... 😬😹

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"captain's log supplemental:

This week I have submitted my tenure packet, proposal (NIH resubmission), and a manuscript (for review)

The holographic doctor tells me that I may be experiencing some elevated fatigue and should better take care of my sleep schedule."

But yes to productive week!!

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

New: After a long wait, the GRFP solicitation is live! Deadlines have been extended to early November, so applicants have a bit over a month to submit. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Angry Arne Slot 😬😡

For last 10 years - we have worked with thousands of organizations around the world helping support them in integrating foldscope programs.

To bring in a new cohort of organizations - we are re-launching “fast and curious” 2025 edition - apply and get a Foldscope trainer and Foldscopes for free!

Photo of square orange tiles, set into the ground, across one of which several cats footprints are clearly visible.

One day, nearly 2000 years ago, a cat dashed across some drying tiles, somewhere near Hadrian's Wall.

It's immortality of a kind, isn't it?

Credit to team members (Ena, Jaimie, Maro, Helen, and Roquel) thankful to each of them. And also @robthehoosier.bsky.social for all his support.

This is our first step 🩴 in the project 🐙 🔬and have a long (and exciting) way to ahead!

2 main take aways
(A) Hydra - vulgaris specifically is really great at surface attachment.

(B) At high volumetric flow rates (high shear) polyps (again vulgaris in particular) aligns with the flow direction.

Happy to share our new pre-print using microfluidics to look into flow response of Hydra.

Will this is a really cool and creative approach.

Congrats to you and the team.

Critical and unmet biomedical need + also many other applications (food, cosmetic products).

Our prototype Disintegration Fingerprinting apparatus. (A) A servo drops a single pill into a water-filled cup atop a magnetic stirrer. The pill begins to disintegrate into particles (B), and an infrared optical sensor on the side of the cup detects the light reflected by individual particles as they pass the sensor (C). As the particles disintegrate and dissolve further, the number of particles detected changes (D). A plot of peak count vs. time (E) serves as a “Disintegration Fingerprint” for this pill.

Our latest preprint on medRxiv: Identifying counterfeit medications using a $4 optical sensor meant for use in toy robots. 🧪💊🤖

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

I really think we need (physical) thank you or congrats notes to send all the researchers - specifically for folks early in their research careers (for example grad students).

We have been talking about a way to do this (communications) activity in a course. But haven't fully figured it out yet.

Postcard with template for requesting a reprint of an article from a journal

Back of postcard with university address.

Here's a fun bit of science history for you: Back before we could just download PDFs, if you wanted a paper and it wasn't in a journal in your library, you wrote to the author for a copy.

So universities made these nice little post cards for requesting article reprints.

YouTube video by System Of A Down - Topic Arto

System of Down also used it in their hidden track Arto (toxicity 2001)
m.youtube.com/watch?v=qNG7...
Which is based on the famous chant
That Serj Tankian is singing here
m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwrz...

Wow engineering is 0.
We should fix that.

Applications Now Open for $60,000 NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship Awards The NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship Program provides grants, mentors and technical support to doctoral students doing outstanding research relevant to NVIDIA technologies. The application deadline for the ...

For PhD students in my network, NVIDIA is now accepting applications for our graduate fellowship program. If you are working on topics across AI, life sciences, healthcare and HPC - consider applying.
blogs.nvidia.com/blog/applica...

K2 Therapeutics

Our new company, K2 Therapeutics, is off to the races to develop new antibody drugs that target multipass membrane proteins. We are hiring so check us out! www.k2-tx.com/home#careers

My team has updated our free database of POSTDOC fellowships.

This database contains 286 entries. For each entry, we provide a link, short description, deadline, amount, and eligibility criteria.

Download this updated and expanded database here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

Diagram of a happy cat rolling over a silver vine leaves. A sad mosquito is repelled. The diagram suggests a pathway and the key molecule that induces the behavior.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Another great (cat-centric) paper 😸
I love figure 6.

Teaching this fall?

Here is a handy webpage that will help you generate a list of the days your course(s) meet:

wcaleb.rice.edu/syllabusmake...

Call for contributions to our symposium on animal collective movement in complex environments at SICB 2026 in Portland, OR! Submit your abstract to our complementary sessions and join us for two days of fun discussing and exchanging research on the biomechanics and energetics of animal movement!

A Bar plot. It shows 2/3 of cats studied sleep leftward. The remaining sleep rightward. The plot has photos of two cats sleeping (one leftward, the other rightward) under each chart to demonstrate their results. Both cats look comfortable - deep in sleep.

One of the most fun papers (brief) I have read this year

www.cell.com/action/showP...

Cats prefer to sleep on their left side.
Also they sleep 12-16 hrs/day.
😸💤

Tube feet dynamics drive adaptation in sea star locomotion Sea stars use hundreds of tube feet on their oral surface to crawl, climb, and navigate complex environments—all without the coordination of a central brain. While the morphology of tube feet and thei...

Fascinating new work on mechanics and tube feet dynamics during starfish locomotion, which reveals a robust, decentralized strategy for locomotion on challenging terrain involving modulation of foot-substrate contact time in response to mechanical load: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Flyer from CSU Long Beach advertising for the position of Assistant Professor of Elasmobranch Biology. The flyer has a picture of a white shark in the banner. Application deadline is September 03, 2025. Christine Whitcraft can be contacted for details at Christine.whitcraft@csulb.edu Full job description can be found here: https://careers.pageuppeople.com/873/lb/en-us/job/549205/assistant-professor-of-biological-sciences-elasmobranch-biologist

The Biology Department at CSU Long Beach is now advertising for an Assistant Professor of Elasmobranch Biology. Refer to the attached flyer for details. @uwsafs.bsky.social @uwmarinebiology.bsky.social @misselasmo.bsky.social @whysharksmatter.bsky.social @official-bweems.bsky.social

How Simple Innovations are Fighting Fake Medicine: a discussion with Dr. William H. Grover, Associate Professor, Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Riverside, and Shabbir Safdar, Executive Director, Partnership for Safe Medicines

Thanks to @shabbirsafdar.bsky.social and @safemedicines.bsky.social for having me on the Partnership for Safe Medicines podcast!

I had a great time chatting with Shabbir about my lab's work developing tools for fighting fake medicines. Listen to the episode here: www.podbean.com/media/share/... 🧪