Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
vmminin.bsky.social
Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
@vmminin.bsky.social
grew up as a human in Ukraine, grew up as a scientist in USA | stochastic processes | statistical modeling | infectious disease dynamics | phylogenetics | systems biology | DEI in STEM/Statistics | faculty @ucirvine.bsky.social

http://vnminin.github.io
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
On Oct 1, 2025, GISAID informed us that they had ended updates to the flat file of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences and associated metadata that we had used to update Nextstrain analyses since Feb 2020. GISAID's stated rationale was that their "resources are limited". 1/5
November 6, 2025 at 9:46 PM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
NEW: @CDCgov hit hard by massive firings that several staff describe to me as a “bloodbath.”
Among those RIFd:
—leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases;
—leadership of global health center
—leadership of the measles outbreak response; 1/4
October 11, 2025 at 12:49 PM
In another display of incredible resilience, Ukrainian mathematicians in 2022(❗) opened a new International Centre for Mathematics in Ukraine (ICMU): icmu.ua/en

It was pleasure to give an online mini-course on Bayesian Statistics to Ukrainian students and scientists: icmu.ua/en/events/in...
International Centre for Mathematics in Ukraine - ICMU
ICMU supports top-level research in mathematics, with special emphasis on training younger generations of scientists and the development of mathematics in Ukraine.
icmu.ua
October 5, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Russian soldiers proudly call their campaign to hunt Ukrainian civilians with the help of drones "human safari." Yes, you've read this correctly: deliberately hunting *civilians* using drones
🚑🚨New Interactive Map: Human Safari Russian drones stalk Kherson daily — indiscriminately hunting civilians. Since 2023, over 3,000 casualties have been recorded.

Explore how these war crimes has developed over the years in our interractive map🗺️ maps.tochnyi.info/humansafari/
Tochnyi » The Human Safari
An interactive map of the atrocities caused by the Russian Human Safari in Kherson, Ukraine.
maps.tochnyi.info
September 29, 2025 at 9:04 PM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
Closing a Department of Statistics, in this day and age, is incredible and shortsighted. Please, read below. I encourage everyone from all over the world to submit their feedback here

apc.unl.edu/fall-2025-bu...
September 16, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Don't miss UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program if you are looking for postdoc opportunities: ppfp.ucop.edu/info/how-to-...
How to apply
ppfp.ucop.edu
September 11, 2025 at 4:26 AM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
“University of California scientists helped create the Internet, wet suits, artificial intelligence and a lung therapy that has saved an untold number of premature newborns.”

www.latimes.com/california/n...
The 'death knell' of America's top public university?
Your morning catch-up: UC fights the Trump administration, voters in deep-red NorCal are fuming about Newsom’s maps, and more big stories.
www.latimes.com
August 21, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
In a new preprint we use deep learning on lineage trees to infer the functional form of the relationship between affinity and fitness that controls antibody evolution in germinal centers: arxiv.org/abs/2508.09871 🧵
Inference of germinal center evolutionary dynamics via simulation-based deep learning
B cells and the antibodies they produce are vital to health and survival, motivating research on the details of the mutational and evolutionary processes in the germinal centers (GC) from which mature...
arxiv.org
August 16, 2025 at 10:56 PM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
Screenshot of cases from the U.S. CDC’s website showing the number of national measles cases indexed by rash onset date.

Are they going down?
August 16, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
preliminary work from us on seroepidemiology of #Aedes borne disease in East #Ethiopia. Long story short - LOTS of exposure to #dengue and #chikungunya. There have been outbreaks, but looks endemic to me. More work needed on that. There might be Zika transmission too: : dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...
High seroprevalence of antibodies to Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika viruses in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia: A cross-sectional survey in 2024
Author summary Mosquito-borne viruses such as dengue, chikungunya, and Zika pose growing public health challenges in many parts of Africa, but limited surveillance makes it difficult to assess their t...
dx.plos.org
August 15, 2025 at 3:34 AM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
✨ Looking to add something special to your decor?

This is your last chance to order FREE Scientific Superhero posters for your home, office, university, or lab from CDC-INFO on Demand.

The last day to order is August 15, 2025 before they shut things down.

www.cdc.gov/advanced-mol...
August 5, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
The California Department of Public Health is pleased to invite abstract submissions for the 4th Annual Western States Modeling Symposium, to be held virtually on Wednesday, October 8, 2025, from 10am PT.

Register: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...
August 11, 2025 at 10:35 PM
That's us 🤓 @dmparker.bsky.social and company

Special thanks to ‪@juemos.bsky.social (not a co-author, unfortunately for us), whose joke about our work in progress at the time (when we were prepping to apply for NSF PIPP II competition) inspired the title of the paper! 🚽
Isaac H. Goldstein, Daniel M. Parker, Sunny Jiang, Aiswarya Rani Pappu, Volodymyr M. Minin
The signal is not flushed away: Inferring the effective reproduction number from wastewater data in small populations
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03959
August 7, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Austrian Journal of Statistics has a special issue this year highlighting research in the Department of Probability, Statistics and Actuarial Mathematics at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv 🇺🇦 Legends like Gnedenko, Gikhman, and Skorokhod worked there

www.ajs.or.at/index.php/aj...
Vol. 54 No. 1 (2025): Special Issue by the Department of Probability, Statistics and Actuarial Mathematics at TSNU of Kyiv | Austrian Journal of Statistics
www.ajs.or.at
July 20, 2025 at 5:21 AM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
💜 LA
This is incredibly beautiful storytelling.
June 21, 2025 at 9:06 PM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
During Pride month, we're highlighting LGBTQ leaders in public health history.

Alan Hart, born in 1890, was a physician, researcher, radiologist, and novelist. 🧵 1/3
June 16, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
What's happening in LA? Here's what I see.

scienceforeveryone.science/p/a-quick-re...
A quick report from Los Angeles
Immigrants and the rule of law in the world's 4th largest economy
scienceforeveryone.science
June 11, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
I wrote a full response to this here, which explains why there remains a discrepancy between outgroup- and date-based rooting that still makes it impossible to reliably root the tree: academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...
The Data are Insufficient to Confidently Root the SARS-CoV-2 Phylogenetic Tree
Abstract. Several years ago, I published a paper that described the discrepancy between outgroup and date-based methods for rooting the SARS-CoV-2 phylogen
academic.oup.com
June 11, 2025 at 12:06 PM
I am not an expert on the early SARS-CoV-2 evolution, but this looks like a thorough study. It is also important given a big splash @jbloomlab.bsky.social's recovered sequence analysis made back in 2021
Four years ago, Jesse Bloom announced the recovery of SARS-CoV-2 sequences and suggested they could come from very early COVID-19 patients.

Zach Hensel and I found out that Bloom's claim relied on the deliberate omission of a January 30, 2020 collection date contradicting his narrative. 🧪 #PopGen
A Critical Reexamination of Recovered SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing Data
Abstract. In 2021, Jesse Bloom published a study addressing why the earliest SARS-CoV-2 sequences in Wuhan from late December 2019 were not those most simi
academic.oup.com
June 11, 2025 at 4:58 AM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
Remarkable open letter to the director from NIH staff on the health, financial,academic freedom, and other impacts of changes at the agency. www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec...
Bethesda Declaration — STAND UP FOR SCIENCE
Support NIH Staff Now!
www.standupforscience.net
June 9, 2025 at 2:03 PM
June 2, 2025 at 3:58 AM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
🚨 A new rule would let career scientists like NSF/NIH program officers be replaced by political appointees

Already 14,000+ public comments, deadline is Friday

📣 Comments can be short. Courts consider them—and scientists with NSF/NIH experience are especially impactful

Speak up! shorturl.at/WKuBj
May 21, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Volodymyr Minin 🇺🇦🇺🇸
If you are frustrated with the Trump policy of coddling Russian war criminals, you can give a hand yourself.
savelife.in.ua/en/
Come Back Alive Foundation - Charity Organization
One of the top charity organizations who help the Ukraine Army since 2014. Donate via the website - 100% of proceeds go directly to Ukraine Army.
savelife.in.ua
May 21, 2025 at 5:51 PM