François Charih 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
banner
charih.ca
François Charih 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
@charih.ca
I use computers to solve problems in biology and health sciences.

He/they/il
FR/EN

📍Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada
https://charih.ca
Misinformationcan have devastating consequences and is going to be challenging to fight off in the era of AI...
November 11, 2025 at 2:19 AM
This is my cat, Rosalind. I'll let you guess who I named her after.
November 8, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Reposted by François Charih 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
It's irritating that they describe the effects of his racism as limited to causing controversy within science and reputational consequences for himself rather than giving an immeasurable boost, false veneer of legitimacy, and idiot-friendly prestige to modern scientific racism and eugenics.
November 7, 2025 at 7:42 PM
Mixed feelings: Though he held & promoted deeply racist views, his contributions to biology have forever changed biology and saved lives.

BTW: his most consequential contribution was made possible by a woman who got a fraction of his recognition: Rosalind Franklin.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/s...
James Watson, Co-Discoverer of the Structure of DNA, Is Dead at 97
www.nytimes.com
November 7, 2025 at 10:27 PM
My colleague Nashira Ridgeway published a paper on the prediction of enzyme substrate specificity in Communications Chemistry. I'm happy to have contributed to this excellent work.

Congrats, Nashira!

www.nature.com/articles/s42...
Machine learning-driven prediction of substrates for enzymes introducing or removing protein post-translational modifications - Communications Chemistry
Understanding post-translational modifications (PTMs) is crucial for advancing disease research and cancer therapeutics, yet identifying specific enzyme-induced PTM sites remains challenging. Here, th...
www.nature.com
November 7, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Microsoft Word is a horrible piece of software. Incredibly frustrated with having to use it to collaborate.
October 24, 2025 at 5:15 PM
I really, really don't like where we're heading.

Who is going to sound the alarm? 🚨
wikipedia's data shows that AI is siphoning traffic away from the site, which is a danger to its sustainability. ironically Wikipedia is more important than ever to users who want reliable information instead of slop, and to AI companies that need it for training data www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...
Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors
“With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.”
www.404media.co
October 18, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Cette collection de textes est extrêmement intéressante!

Une éventuelle campagne référendaire sur l'indépendance du Québec ne ressemblerait en rien à celles que mes parents et grands-parents ont connu. Les médias sociaux, l'IA, les mèmes - un climat social différent.
October 18, 2025 at 9:59 AM
"[T]he problems seems to be not AI but lazy application of it and lack of checks." 🎯

AI is not an problem in and of itself; it's how it's misused. We need to be more careful with AI.
Chemists call for ban on generative AI for chemical structures: "serious errors could damag[e] the next generation of scientists"

As ever, the problem seems to be not AI but lazy application of it and lack of checks. Whether _that_ problem is solvable...

www.chemistryworld.com/news/the-che...
The chemistry community should ban drawing chemical structures with generative AI, chemists warn
AIs like Microsoft's Copilot, Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT still make serious errors rendering structural formulae
www.chemistryworld.com
October 16, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Reviewing a paper for ICLR 2026...

I'm really impressed with the audacity of the authors who think they can submit what is essentially an AI-generated paper to a top-tier AI conference and think they won't get caught...
October 15, 2025 at 7:39 PM
J'ai hâte de ne plus avoir à toucher un produit Microsoft.

Un problème avec le open source est le retard en fonctionnalités sur les logiciels payants. Plus on va donner de chance à des initiatives open source, plus ils y aura de contributions et plus ils auront la chance de combler l'écart.
Un État allemand bannit Microsoft de son administration au profit de l'open source: ✱ Bien joué.
Un État allemand bannit Microsoft de son administration au profit de l'open source
✱ Bien joué.
siecledigital.fr
October 15, 2025 at 8:19 AM
Il y a beaucoup de sensibilisation et d'éducation qui doit se faire au sujet des « chatbots ». L'utilisateur moyen devrait apprécier, au moins de façon abstraite, comment ils fonctionnent.

Je suis sidéré par l'indifférence générale à ce sujet...

youtube.com/watch?v=OZ_Z...
ChatGPT et le danger de la « psychose » | Décrypteurs
YouTube video by Radio-Canada Info
youtube.com
October 10, 2025 at 4:13 PM
Le principe selon lequel il ne faudrait pas mépriser « ceux qui ne pensent pas comme vous » ne s'applique pas lorsque les pensées remettent en question la légitimité et les droits des personnes vulnérables.
October 6, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Enjoying a morning cup in Marrakesh. I've missed that city.

First time in recent memory that I go without the mental burden of a thesis to write and it feels nice!
October 6, 2025 at 7:54 AM
Horrific. Simply horrific. This clown is causing so much harm to science. This will hurt humanity for years, if not a decade or more...
Those on an H1B cannot return to the US from tomorrow (Sunday) unless paying $100K. This is an out-of-the blue presidential action. We’ll see software engineers stranded abroad.

One easy to predict outcome: those on US visas will travel less… for work, for conferences etc.
September 20, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Trump impose des tarifs douaniers de façon injustifiée qui ont des conséquences catastrophiques sur le Canada.

Il s'attend à quoi? Qu'on élève au statut de dieu un « allié » qui nous poignarde dans le dos?
September 18, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Maintenant, je retrouve un peu de temps pour suivre l'actualité. Ceci dit, je me questionne à savoir si c'est une bonne chose... le monde est en feu.
September 18, 2025 at 3:17 AM
Happy to share that my review on Computational PPI prediction for drug discovery has now been published:

www.mdpi.com/2073-4409/14...
www.mdpi.com
September 17, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Superbe chronique de Rima Elkouri.
September 16, 2025 at 2:53 AM
Une grande perte.
September 14, 2025 at 5:03 PM
That is fascism.
September 11, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Ayoye. Défendre les armes à feu à mort (littéralement).
September 10, 2025 at 11:11 PM
Reposted by François Charih 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
Un exemple concret de pourquoi la recherche fondamentale est ESSENTIELLE! Des recherches menées pendant des décennies visant à comprendre comment fonctionnent les cellules souches du sang, on permit de developper un traitement pour la leucémie!

www.journaldemontreal.com/2025/09/05/c...
Un miracle québécois: ce jeune homme de 25 ans survit à la leucémie grâce à un médicament révolutionnaire découvert à Montréal
Un jeune patient atteint de leucémie à qui on ne donnait que deux ans à vivre est en rémission grâce à un traitement mis au point à Montréal.
www.journaldemontreal.com
September 8, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Super intéressant!

Les auteurs essaient de répondre, avec des modèles d'apprentissage automatique, pourquoi certaines maladies se déclarent chez certains porteurs de marqueurs génétiques, mais pas chez d'autres, à partir de fragments exprimés (exomes) de leur génomes.
September 4, 2025 at 4:51 PM
My pre-print describing the most accurate lab-validated lysine methylation predictor to date, MethylSight 2.0, is now available!

doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Leveraging learned representations and multitask learning for lysine methylation site discovery
Lysine methylation is a dynamic and reversible post-translational modification of proteins carried out by lysine methyltransferase enzymes. The role of this modification in epigenetics and gene regula...
doi.org
September 1, 2025 at 10:57 PM