Ian Sudbery

My thought on AI review: lh3.github.io/2026/10/27/l... TL;DR: journals are banning fully AI-generated review and I think that is the right decision

Today would have been my daughter's 21st birthday. It's a tough one. I miss her like crazy and would give anything to have her chaos back in our lives. What I can do today is ask for your help. We created the Sophie Burdine-Schwartz Impact Fund through the @angelmanfoundation.bsky.social /1

Amazing labs and excellent project. Highly recommended

735 staff applying for voluntary redundancy at Ulster University Nearly a quarter of the workforce wants out! You can blame the funding model, but when the exodus is this huge University leadership cannot dodge the question: how did it get this bad? www.timeshighereducation.com/news/nearly-...

I have spent 20 years telling myself, and the people I work with, to not put too much text on slides, and use at least 20 picas font size. But now it looks like ChatGPT's integration with Powerpoint is destroying scientific presentations. Insanely complex slides, poor visuals and so much text.

The future of biology is not just about collecting more data, but also about uncovering new principles and deriving new understanding. Theory and expts go hand in hand! See www.asimov.press/p/theory-bio... Excited that Theory & Concepts is back for the 3rd edition: come join us at EMBL next July!!

I will be advertising a 4-year postdoc soon. We're looking for a molecular biologist with interest in #AMR. You'll join researchers across the Universities of Warwick, Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds to study the emergence of vancomycin resistance in C. difficile. Contact me for more info! #microsky

You should be fascinated hitting the power button on your computer.

 Every boot on an x86 machine iterates through the entire sequence of computing evolution in a few milliseconds:

Does anyone have a set of lab AI guidelines they'd be willing to share? I'm planning to have a discussion in lab meeting next week as to how we approach genAI as a lab, and I'd love to send out se examples from other labs as conversation starters.

Some personal news! After 14 fantastic years at the University of Sheffield, I will be taking up a new role as a professor in @warwicklifesci.bsky.social early in the new year. I'm really excited to get to know more of the brilliant scientists in Warwick and to grow our research in a new home

#NotTheOnion

I do find it interesting that there's a lot of criticism of the "good chap"* theory of government but the reality is that no amount of constitutional drafting can stop a sufficient number of chaps who are not good. *yes this is seixst, I don't know what the gender neutral version of "chap" is

Imagine the UK had a manufacturing sector that was losing 10,000 jobs a year?

No, bombing Yandex has not impacted automated Russian trolling operations in the U.S.

I wrote up that thread on the new paper on Rosalind Franklin as a Substack post. matthewcobb2.substack.com/p/how-our-vi...

The novel transcripts we keep rediscovering www.nature.com/articles/s4...

And finally any version of “Do you know who I am?”. Really no answer to that benefits you in the face of a rejection, and worst-case scenario the retort will be “yeah and you’re lucky we didn’t factor that in to the decision”. 🤣

We were already crowdfunding all these things that benefit society. It’s called taxes.

😥

Applications are open for our new AI/ML clinical fellowships, combining formal MSc-level training in AI and machine learning with PhD or postdoctoral research at the Crick. Find out more about the programme and apply by 11 November: https://bit.ly/4hxmAgn

⭐ Celebrating the Launch of the Human Genome Project (HPG) 🧬36 years ago today, scientists launched one of biology’s most ambitious experiments: reading the ~3 billion bases of the human genome. On Oct. 1, 1990, HPG began with a seemingly impossible question: Could we sequence the human genome? 1/5

Two things surprise me about this: 1. People aren't more mad at Apple. Surely it should not be possible for an app to ignore a permission set at the OS level. That does not sound like secure OS design. 2. People think that not using anything by Meta makes them safe from this.

Four days ago, a scientist was surprised by the news that Anthropic discovered new virus genes for making DNA. He says he’s been studying them for years—and feeding his data to Anthropic’s AI as part of his own research. Coincidence? Here’s my story. nyti.ms/3VSWayc

The chipping away at citizenship, which started with Shamima Begum, is utterly poisonous. Anytime now, Restore will support the removal of citizenship on the basis of race or religion.

Personal essay, weekend edition. My relationship with AI is changing. 1.8k words, 8 min reading time. doi.org/10.59350/bh7...

Ok what is the most death metal biology term? Cytokine storm? Programmed death 1? Executioner caspase? Other?

Reposting this postdoc opening in our lab. We also now have an opening for a graduate research assistant for the same project. Deadline 23rd October 2026 and details here: elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

TT faculty opening at Indiana University-Bloomington. ⬇️

You're going to be needing specialists in: languages, narrative, history, psychology, information, mythology, conspiracies, etc, etc. then? #humanities #socialscience

This is true of many places - higher education is not only a cultural good, it is a massive driver of economies in otherwise left behind places that politicians and journalists rarely visit. What will happen if/when the financial crisis in HE leads to closures?

Why do all these AI generated infographics all looks the same? Down to their blue backgrounds and glowing 3D lines? Outs not like it would be hard to all for something different in the prompt.

god, i was born in the wrong era. imagine being around in the Cambrian period. you could just evolve something simple like shell or legs that nobody had thought of before and coast on that your whole life

There is absolutely nothing to support that any of these scientists were "trying to weaponize pathogens". While I don't have access to the underlying data, reading the examples given by Anthropic, they all appear to be basic virological research.

I don’t know which is greater: my inertia at getting going on Monday morning or my disappointment at all that I accomplished (or did not accomplish) in that week on Friday evening. Probably equal I would say.

Great lab and excellent project. Highly recommend

Well. Would you look at that.

The anthropic whistleblower is like "no other activity has the potential to create human extinction." Well, speaking as someone who works for a climate think tank, I can think of one