Ryan N. Felice
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rnf.bsky.social
Ryan N. Felice
@rnf.bsky.social
390 followers 250 following 9 posts
Associate professor of evolutionary biology at UCL

felicelab.com
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Reposted by Ryan N. Felice
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Ryan N. Felice
knapprew.bsky.social
It's #caturday so here's Emile, the star of my talk today at #svp2025.
November 15, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Reposted by Ryan N. Felice
morpho-kat.bsky.social
If you're at #SVP2025 please stop by my poster and say hi! I'd love to talk to you about bird head evolution!
November 15, 2025 at 10:34 AM
rnf.bsky.social
Good morning #SVP2025! Big day for the Felice Lab- three talks this morning from postdocs @jwoyston.bsky.social,
Ryan Marek, and @knapprew.bsky.social, on bird diversity, theropod necks, and mammal brains, and the PhD student Kat Gregory presenting a poster on tradeoffs in the head of birds!
November 15, 2025 at 7:45 AM
Reposted by Ryan N. Felice
m-j-mitchell.bsky.social
So happy to share that after years of hard work our paper on low hatching success in the #ExtinctInTheWild #Sihek has now been published in Animal Conservation! Read more here: zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #Ornithology #ConservationScience 🌍 🦤 🧪
Parental Age, Inbreeding and Incubation Method Influence Extremely Low Hatching Success in the Ex‐Situ Population of the Extinct in the Wild Sihek
Reproductive success rates are a key parameter determining the recovery potential of ex-situ managed threatened species, with high rates often being required to produce offspring for wild releases wh...
zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
August 5, 2025 at 7:50 AM
Reposted by Ryan N. Felice
mmoazen.bsky.social
POST-DOC #JOB ADVERT – DEADLINE 20th Aug 2025
@ucl.ac.uk @ucl-c4ia.bsky.social @moazenlab.bsky.social
To work on a #HFSP funded project that aims to understand the musculoskeletal system of head-first burrowers; leading computer simulation aspects of the project see moazenlab.com/vacancies/
Moazen Lab – to advance understanding & repair of bones & joints
moazenlab.com
July 22, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Reposted by Ryan N. Felice
acsharp.bsky.social
Are you looking for a PhD project starting this year?

I have a funded (UK rates) project on mammal skull diversity and function, looking at skull allometry and how mammal heads adapt to trade-offs in tissue demands during growth 🦌🦘🐘🦥

Please share and apply: www.liverpool.ac.uk/courses/buil...
Building giants: tissue relationships during skull growth in large mammals | Courses | University of Liverpool
From elephants to rhinos to bison, enormous increases in body mass have repeatedly evolved within Mammalia over relatively short timescales, leading to a diversity of size and shape. In this project, ...
www.liverpool.ac.uk
July 3, 2025 at 11:16 AM
rnf.bsky.social
Do you like 3d imaging and invertebrate development? apply for this postdoc with @echinerd.bsky.social and me!
echinerd.bsky.social Jeff Thompson @echinerd.bsky.social · May 12
Interested in Developmental biology? Imaging? Marine invertebrate body plans? Then this three year postdoc in my group @sotonbiosciences.bsky.social is for you! Join our team to decypher how signalling molecules shape skeletal phenotype in juvenile sea urchins. jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
May 14, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by Ryan N. Felice
joerees.bsky.social
New post-doc opportunity working with Dr Marcello Ruta at the University of Lincoln.

3 year position titled “Key Innovations as Evolutionary Drivers of the Fish-Tetrapod Transition” and working on resolving phylogenetic patterns near the ancestral roots of amniotes.

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMS325/p...
Post Doctoral Research Associate in Evolutionary PalaeobiologySchool of Natural Sciences at University of Lincoln
Discover Post Doctoral Research Associate in Evolutionary PalaeobiologySchool of Natural Sciences jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.
www.jobs.ac.uk
April 17, 2025 at 10:12 AM
rnf.bsky.social
yes, penguins are flightless birds, but this is taking it too far
Unsecured penguin caused helicopter crash in South Africa
Pilot lost control after bird in cardboard box slid off a passenger's knee and knocked controls, aviation authority finds.
www.bbc.co.uk
April 11, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Reposted by Ryan N. Felice
evoswami.bsky.social
Exciting times ahead!

www.gov.uk/government/n...
New Chief Scientific Adviser appointed
Professor Anjali Goswami becomes Defra’s new Chief Scientist
www.gov.uk
April 9, 2025 at 10:27 AM
rnf.bsky.social
check out @m-j-mitchell.bsky.social 's research on extinct in the wild birds ⬇️
m-j-mitchell.bsky.social Matthew Mitchell @m-j-mitchell.bsky.social · Apr 2
#ExtinctInTheWild (EW) species are some of the most at risk in the world, existing only in human care. I’m a PhD student at @zslofficial.bsky.social and @ucl-c4ia.bsky.social studying how time spent in human care may affect EW bird recovery #BOU2025 #Ornithology #ConservationScience 🌍 🦤 🧪 1/6
April 4, 2025 at 10:08 AM
rnf.bsky.social
check out this new paper from @devinhoffman.bsky.social using bone histology to uncover growth rates in a fossil gator 🐊
pdmannion.bsky.social Phil Mannion @pdmannion.bsky.social · Feb 10
Our new paper led by @devinhoffman.bsky.social ([email protected], @tweetisaurus.bsky.social, @rnf.bsky.social & Eryka Goldsmith) on the histology of the alligatoroid Diplocynodon indicates that growth strategy in alligators and caimans evolved early in the group: doi.org/10.1111/joa....
February 10, 2025 at 9:44 AM
rnf.bsky.social
What good is a big brain? In our new preprint, @jwoyston.bsky.social, Mike May, and I show that birds with bigger brains have lower extinction rates www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A cartoon owl with a graduation cap on- clearly a big-brained bird
February 6, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Reposted by Ryan N. Felice
cait.bsky.social
there is no "defensible use case" for chatgpt. do your own work and use your own brain or fuck off
January 28, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Ryan N. Felice
princecharlescinema.com
#SaveThePCC

Some of you may have read about the situation regarding our new landlord wishing to add a new redevelopment break clause, with only 6 months notice to our lease.

For now, we're simply asking you all to share & sign the petition below;

you.38degrees.org.uk/p/princechar...
Save The Prince Charles Cinema
The iconic Prince Charles Cinema in London’s West End future is under serious threat! We are beyond disappointed that our landlords Zedwell LSQ Ltd and their ultimate parent company Criterion Capital...
you.38degrees.org.uk
January 28, 2025 at 10:14 AM
rnf.bsky.social
turns out you can do some pretty cool stuff with the power of diceCT, SPROUT (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...), and the SmARTR pipeline (www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...)
a 3d rendering of the skull and cranial muscles of the Eurasian oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus)
December 21, 2024 at 3:28 PM
rnf.bsky.social
More anatomical research happening in the UCL Centre for Integrative Anatomy
Three students in lab coats dissecting bird specimens
November 14, 2024 at 4:52 PM
rnf.bsky.social
Took some time away from R today to do some dissecting. I feel like a real biologist.
The skinned head of a Eurasian Oystercatcher
November 13, 2024 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Ryan N. Felice
martinezgonixs.bsky.social
📢Calling all researchers! We are studying what makes a great (or not-so-great) supervisor from the perspective of PhD students and postdocs. Our goal? To improve academic mentorship and research environments. Got 5-10 minutes? Take the survey!✍️
forms.gle/WT9GoiaHxypX...
Labelling my scientific supervisor: A genuine leader or just a big jerk?
Thank you for taking part in this survey. The aim of this survey is to understand which characteristics make a scientific supervisor supportive and constructive or, conversely, detrimental to the grow...
forms.gle
November 7, 2024 at 2:30 PM