Robin H. van der Weide

🌱 As of Jan 1, I started as Assistant Professor at UMC Utrecht – Center for Molecular Medicine. Very grateful to @dewitlab.bsky.social and @jopkind.bsky.social and to the many other people who supported me along the way. I’ll be launching the lab soon, focusing on Chromatin Systems Biology.

Officially not a one-person show anymore 🎉 Excited to welcome Sandra, Giacomo, Ruben, and Anouk to the lab at the @umcutrecht.bsky.social. We're diving into chromatin systems biology together. Feels good to say "we" now.

Very happy to see this story out in the wild!

New paper in Genes & Dev: we dissected how Sox2 — a key pluripotency TF — is regulated by a distal enhancer cluster (SCR) 100 kb away. The results challenge simple models of cohesin-mediated loop extrusion of gene regulation. genesdev.cshlp.org/content/earl... 🧵

💼 Hiring a Staff Technician at my Chromatin Systems Biology lab (UMC Utrecht). A wet lab role with real ownership: co-develop research lines, contribute to publications, build something from the ground up. Permanent position, pending tenure. Details & apply:

@amandaanderssonr.bsky.social, @antonelladost.bsky.social, @robinhweide.bsky.social and @sorayang.bsky.social started their own labs in early 2026. Read about their time at the Hubrecht Institute, their new research groups and their transition into independence here: www.hubrecht.eu/postdocs-sta...

We are hiring! Looking for curious and motivated new colleagues to join my lab at the Karolinska Institute @ki.se. If you are interested in studying cell identity and pancreas biology using human organoids, (spatial)omics genome and bioengineering please reach out! #hiring #sciencejob #STEMJobs

Thrilled to share Marta Moreno Gonzalez’s paper, where we benchmarked whether existing imputation approaches can be repurposed for single-cell hPTM datasets. This is also a special milestone for me, as it’s my first last-author paper. @hubrechtinstitute.bsky.social @umcutrecht.bsky.social

A new and fascinating story from @bencarty.bsky.social and the group, with crucial help from the teams of @naltemose.bsky.social, Simona Giunta, and @dfachinetti.bsky.social. Many thanks to all for a fantastic collaboration. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Introducing bluffbench, a new tool to evaluate how well LLMs actually see data plots. When we trick LLMs with secret #RStats transformations, they can miss the visual contradiction. bluffbench helps us measure this "blind spot" in AI coding agents. Learn more: posit.co/blog/introdu...

periodic reminder of the existence of Atkinson Hyperlegible, a free font available from the Braille Institute designed to improve readability for people with low vision I use it in talks because it's pretty and also because, as an audience member, I am perpetually squinting at people's slides

I need a reference manager that's amazing for both organizing and reading on a laptop & tablet. 📑 It's a showdown: Paperpile vs. ReadCube Papers. What's your go-to and why? #Academia #Paperpile #ReadCube

Shortcomings of silhouette in single-cell integration benchmarking - @uweohler.bsky.social @prauten.bsky.social @mdc-bimsb.bsky.social @mdc-berlin.bsky.social @humboldtuni.bsky.social go.nature.com/4fcQzZr

Agony aunt 🖋️ A cancer researcher is suspicious about a paper they’ve been asked to review. What steps should they take? go.nature.com/3UhImt0

We found a new asymmetry in the large-scale chromosome structure: sister chromatids are systematically shifted by hundreds of kb in the 5′→3′ direction of their inherited strands! The work was led by Flavia Corsi, in close collaboration with the Daniel Gerlich lab. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/

🚨 Preprint 🚨 Ever wondered how cells prepare their genomes to enable new cell-fates? In this team up with the Kind lab, we show that genes are repositioned in the nucleus to get ready for future activation and tissue formation. Read 🧵👇 to find out how and when this happens! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🚨 Preprint alert 🚨 Excited to share our work on "Ab-trapping," an antibody artifact causing misleading peripheral ("rim") staining in imaging & genomics (IF, CUT&Tag, CUT&RUN). Antibodies fail to penetrate structures, accumulating at the periphery. A 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Our ChromBPNet preprint out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Huge congrats to Anusri! This was quite a slog (for both of us) but we r very proud of this one! It is a long read but worth it IMHO. Methods r in the supp. materials. Bluetorial coming soon below 1/

1/🚀 Excited to share RegVelo, our new cell model combining RNA velocity with gene regulatory network (GRN) dynamics to model cellular changes and predict in silico perturbations. Here's how it works and why it matters! 🧵👇 biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.11.627935v1

Very excited to see our work on genome-wide mapping DNA repair in single cells out @naturecomms.bsky.social Amazing work by Kim de Luca & Pim Rullens. Wonderful collaboration with the Legube lab, @mariekeoudelaar.bsky.social & @jjachowicz.bsky.social . rdcu.be/d0ZAM

I used to have imposter syndrome. I don't any more. At some point I came to terms with the fact that I'm really an imposter. I'm totally ok with it & simply decided to do my best with the opportunities that presented themselves to me, until my luck runs out. It's surprisingly effective.

We strongly suggest that academic publishers and other platforms that host research rapidly implement a Share to Bluesky button for their articles. Here's how: docs.bsky.app/docs/advance... #AcademicSky #HigherEd #Altmetrics

Doing good science is 90% finding a science buddy to constantly talk to about the project.