Profile avatar
vscooper.micropopbio.org
Evangelist for the study of evolution in action by everyone. Pitt Prof | EvolvingSTEM | biofilms | EvMed | genomics entrepreneur (@SeqCoast.bsky.social, @midauthorbio.bsky.social) | ASM volunteer | lifelong exercise addict ~ swim bike run
1,164 posts 7,368 followers 1,381 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter

Day in the life as a cyclist 🚴🏻‍♂️ 😄 "Wow, great riding" -2 elderly folks chatting as I crested a long climb 😡 "Off the road, $%@#" -young man in a utility truck I'll remember the compliment. Keep the rubber side down, friends!

New from The Strain Team: 🎊 Springer Nature Discovers MDPI 🎊 Springer Nature has spawned a copycat journal series called "Discover" mimicking #MDPI journal titles and citation behaviours. We even made a browser game to prove it (see 🔗). Gross! 😀 1/n #ResearchIntegrity #SciPub #AcademicSky

My neighbors! 🐦‍⬛🎵

"You probably hope you can fall back to sleep in a few minutes, but I assure you, you cannot. I’m about to turn it up. I’ve got some buddies out here to rip off a cacophony, and we don’t take harmonization lightly. We live by the song, die by the song."

The media needs to stop referring to RFK Jr. as a "vaccine skeptic." He is a conspiracy theorist and a vaccine denier.

The safety of #ASMicrobe participants is of utmost importance to ASM. We are actively monitoring the ongoing protests in L.A. and are working closely with venue partners and local officials to ensure a safe meeting for all. (1/2)

Two strains isolated 60 years apart. One pan-sensitive, one MDR. How do they evolve under the same antibiotic pressure? Check out our new publication. 👇👇

Official accounts for SMBE and affiliated journals are now on Bluesky: ▫️ Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution @official-smbe.bsky.social ▫️ Molecular Biology and Evolution @molbioevol.bsky.social ▫️ Genome Biology and Evolution @genomebiolevol.bsky.social Starter Pack: go.bsky.app/2xnyMrS

Now published and improved thanks to peer review in Microbiology @microbiologysociety.org, who were awesome to work with. Super work by @aleciarokes.bsky.social @asantoslopez.bsky.social! Thanks Editor @brockhurstlab.bsky.social 👀Final version here: www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

Outstanding article by John Holdren and Neal Lane highlighting damage to NSF, NOAA, and EPA as well as NIH. "the best hope for saving science..is convincing a couple dozen Republican members of Congress that it's up to them" to save US leadership in science thebulletin.org/2025/06/time...

New paper alert! Historic and contemporary A. baumanii show distinct resistance responses to tigecycline, strain history can alter the path of resistance. @microbiologysociety.org @vscooper.micropopbio.org www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...

If you weren't angry enough already, here are the rates of non-competitive renewals through May. 4008 Non-competitive renewals were due to be funded in May. The total funded was 99! Some is due to terminations, but most is due to slow grant making due to DOGE review and other impediments. 1/2

Has anyone received a NOA from a grant scheduled for Jan 25 council that was pushed to April? Just a periodic reminder that the chronic infections we study remain chronic when funding is delayed.

😁

Really neat summary of an amazing project! Back in February 2020, I got to work through this protocol with @carlzimmer.com. It was so well-designed & informative – I wish it’d been around when I was in high school, & it’s such a shame that the grant mechanism supporting it was cut 😭

Sharing the most significant work from my group, led by the @evolvingstem.bsky.social team. Come for the discoveries of how Pseudomonas adapts in biofilms, stay for the story of how they were discovered by thousands of young scientists in grades 9-12. 🧪🧫🧬🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

COCO GAUFF WINS THE FRENCH OPEN 🏆 The American takes down Aryna Sabalenka 6-7, 6-2, 6-4 to claim her second women's Grand Slam singles title.

This is so cool, @vscooper.micropopbio.org 👏 #EvolvingSTEM at its best!

Delighted to see that Pitt joined the grown up table. H2P!

"I was never a Sauron fan. Did I facilitate Sauron's rise to power by donating most of Isengard’s resources to his reconquest campaign and persuading my legions of Uruk-hai followers to support him? Sure, but that doesn’t mean I agreed with him on everything."

If you are a company headed to ASM Microbe in LA this year, consider sponsoring Binning Singletons!

Today CLS brings attention to a sleeper cell proposal in the President's NIH Budget for FY26: Multi-Year Awards. Read our statement to learn why this "nothing to see here" boring-sounding proposal would actually be DEVASTATING to research. www.coalitionforlifesciences.org/cls-objects-...

More powerful evidence that race is not genetic (from AllofUs) But “The screening of [NIH] scientists’ communications contrasts with NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya’s promise to foster a culture of free speech.” www.statnews.com/2025/06/05/n...

Watch me scramble in real time as I try to find the economic angle on the Musk-Trump tiff. (I think I found one, and the issues it highlights are terrifyingly important.)