open.substack.com/pub/clauswil... this is very true and highly under appreciated. Not just for a PhD but any high level accomplishment.

Good morning

Universities historically compete with each other - in rankings, prestige, endowment, students, faculty, sports. But the *entire* academic enterprise is under threat right now. The competition model needs to take a back seat in order to protect academic freedom and the university system as a whole.

Sinclair Lewis wrote ‘It Can’t Happen Here’ in 1935. A “strongman to make the country efficient and prosperous again”. The similarity is…chilling

Huge thanks to his thesis committee @joeyzacks.bsky.social Mike Silverman and Paul Planet and committee chair @elizgrice.bsky.social for all the advice and support along the way

Congratulations to the amazingly talented and brilliant Stefan Peterson @cambupenn.bsky.social on a fantastic thesis defense and dissertation!!

A reminder from one of America’s founding fathers:

DOGE = Department of Government Expediency

‘Of America and for America, and proud to be so’ sounds suspiciously like ‘America First’.

Just joined @aaup.bsky.social @aaup-penn.bsky.social! Now is the time to support academic freedom and higher education.

If this is not reversed it is going to destroy the ability of universities to support biomedical research and it will completely shut down private research institutes like the Salk Institute, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Scripps, and many others.

Just gonna leave this here. For no particular reason

On the power of persistence:

Immune-evasive bacterial flagellins aren’t thought to bind their cognate NAIP proteins. It turns out p38-driven increase in NLRC4 expression confers detection, suggesting that *weak* binding by suboptimal ligands to their sensor can be stabilized in the presence of increased amount of the adapter!

So excited for Marion Pepper’s keynote talk at the Penn IGG retreat!