Stephen Turner
@stephenturner.us
Associate Professor of Data Science & asst. Dean of Research at UVA School of Data Science, #Rstats enthusiast, dad, runner, guitar noise-maker. Views my own.
Web: https://stephenturner.us/
Newsletter: https://blog.stephenturner.us
Web: https://stephenturner.us/
Newsletter: https://blog.stephenturner.us
Pinned
Staying Current in Data Science and Computational Biology: 2026 Edition
Part 3 in a series of posts going back 14 years
doi.org
Staying Current in Data Science and Computational Biology: 2026 Edition. Part 3 in a series of posts going back 14 years. doi.org/10.59350/2na...
Reposted by Stephen Turner
I am going to be honest, this guy needs to be putting some of this into therapy instead of into writing. I find most of his stuff thought-terminating existential dread instead of actually working on strategy and structure to make positive change.
Córy Doctorow with another verbal bullseye: pluralistic.net/2026/01/13/n...
January 18, 2026 at 5:32 PM
I am going to be honest, this guy needs to be putting some of this into therapy instead of into writing. I find most of his stuff thought-terminating existential dread instead of actually working on strategy and structure to make positive change.
Related, the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund www.mbdialogues.org is a new organization trying to prevent mirror life creation, and is currently hiring deputy director and people/program ops lead roles. Remote, salary $150-210k.
January 19, 2026 at 10:11 AM
Related, the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund www.mbdialogues.org is a new organization trying to prevent mirror life creation, and is currently hiring deputy director and people/program ops lead roles. Remote, salary $150-210k.
How scientists are using Claude to accelerate research and discovery www.anthropic.com/news/acceler... 🧬🖥️🧪
January 18, 2026 at 5:00 PM
How scientists are using Claude to accelerate research and discovery www.anthropic.com/news/acceler... 🧬🖥️🧪
With the deepest respect for @olivia.science, whose work I admire, I'm sketching the outline of a paper along the lines of "Against the uncriticized criticism of AI technologies in academia". If you're interested in coauthoring, email me.
January 18, 2026 at 2:26 PM
With the deepest respect for @olivia.science, whose work I admire, I'm sketching the outline of a paper along the lines of "Against the uncriticized criticism of AI technologies in academia". If you're interested in coauthoring, email me.
With a quick Claude Code fix, got this working easily. Will soon refactor, package w/ uv, containerize. github.com/originalanku...
January 18, 2026 at 12:58 PM
With a quick Claude Code fix, got this working easily. Will soon refactor, package w/ uv, containerize. github.com/originalanku...
New #biosecurity paper from RAND: Prioritizing Feasible and Impactful Actions to Enable Secure AI Development and Use in Biology pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41546597/
January 18, 2026 at 12:53 PM
New #biosecurity paper from RAND: Prioritizing Feasible and Impactful Actions to Enable Secure AI Development and Use in Biology pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41546597/
nf-core/crisprseq: a versatile pipeline for comprehensive analysis of CRISPR gene editing and screening assays academic.oup.com/nargab/artic... 🧬🖥️🧪 github.com/nf-core/cris...
January 18, 2026 at 12:50 PM
nf-core/crisprseq: a versatile pipeline for comprehensive analysis of CRISPR gene editing and screening assays academic.oup.com/nargab/artic... 🧬🖥️🧪 github.com/nf-core/cris...
Anyone made a block list yet for people posting screenshots from truth social? If not, hold my beer (coffee).
January 18, 2026 at 12:06 PM
Anyone made a block list yet for people posting screenshots from truth social? If not, hold my beer (coffee).
Epoch AI 2025 impact report epoch.ai/blog/epoch-i...
January 18, 2026 at 9:35 AM
Epoch AI 2025 impact report epoch.ai/blog/epoch-i...
NIH Highlighted Topic: Strengthening Biomedical Research, Promoting Trust, and Improving Health through Bioethics Research grants.nih.gov/funding/find...
January 17, 2026 at 5:00 PM
NIH Highlighted Topic: Strengthening Biomedical Research, Promoting Trust, and Improving Health through Bioethics Research grants.nih.gov/funding/find...
Contextual Distraction: RAG isn't a Seatbelt. A laboratory safety benchmark finds retrieval augmented generation (RAG) can make strong models worse. doi.org/10.59350/8v4... #biosecurity 🧬🖥️🧪
Contextual Distraction: RAG isn't a Seatbelt
A laboratory safety benchmark finds retrieval augmented generation (RAG) can make strong models worse.
doi.org
January 17, 2026 at 4:53 PM
Contextual Distraction: RAG isn't a Seatbelt. A laboratory safety benchmark finds retrieval augmented generation (RAG) can make strong models worse. doi.org/10.59350/8v4... #biosecurity 🧬🖥️🧪
PSA: submitting to the NIH Feb 5 deadline? You'll need a SciENcv biosketch. And the ORCID linkage is sketchy, not working at all for me, despite logout/login, unlink/relink/reauth ORCID. Be prepared to spend a LOT of time with manual data entry.
January 17, 2026 at 11:53 AM
PSA: submitting to the NIH Feb 5 deadline? You'll need a SciENcv biosketch. And the ORCID linkage is sketchy, not working at all for me, despite logout/login, unlink/relink/reauth ORCID. Be prepared to spend a LOT of time with manual data entry.
Block these clowns, and anyone who quote/reposts/screenshots them, right now.
✅ @icegov.bsky.social has been verified by @bsky.app.
January 17, 2026 at 9:34 AM
Block these clowns, and anyone who quote/reposts/screenshots them, right now.
Having been in the genome engineering field for a few years 🦣🐺🦤 I have to say this paper from Jennifer Doudna's lab is very interesting.
Amplified genome editing by in vivo editor production www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Amplified genome editing by in vivo editor production www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
January 16, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Having been in the genome engineering field for a few years 🦣🐺🦤 I have to say this paper from Jennifer Doudna's lab is very interesting.
Amplified genome editing by in vivo editor production www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Amplified genome editing by in vivo editor production www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Interesting article on He Jiankui and gene editing human embryos nytimes.com/2026/01/13/w...
nytimes.com
January 16, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Interesting article on He Jiankui and gene editing human embryos nytimes.com/2026/01/13/w...
New book: Generative AI in R link.springer.com/book/10.1007.... I've never heard of the authors before. If anyone's library has access I'd love the PDF. My email address is easy to find. #Rstats
January 16, 2026 at 3:01 PM
New book: Generative AI in R link.springer.com/book/10.1007.... I've never heard of the authors before. If anyone's library has access I'd love the PDF. My email address is easy to find. #Rstats
That didn't take long at all www.promptarmor.com/resources/cl...
Claude Cowork Exfiltrates Files
Claude Cowork is vulnerable to file exfiltration attacks via indirect prompt injection as a result of known-but-unresolved isolation flaws in Claude's code execution environment.
www.promptarmor.com
January 16, 2026 at 11:08 AM
That didn't take long at all www.promptarmor.com/resources/cl...
I try to stick to posting about science only here, but I just love this too much. Dropkick Murphys "Too Scared to Join the Military, Too Dumb to Be a Cop" 🤘 consequence.net/2026/01/drop...
Dropkick Murphys' Unveil Anti-ICE Song: "Too Scared to Join the Military, Too Dumb to Be a Cop"
Dropkick Murphys are releasing an anti-I.C.E. song, "Citizen I.C.E.," as part of their tour-only split LP with Haywire. Learn more.
consequence.net
January 16, 2026 at 10:16 AM
I try to stick to posting about science only here, but I just love this too much. Dropkick Murphys "Too Scared to Join the Military, Too Dumb to Be a Cop" 🤘 consequence.net/2026/01/drop...
Chinese Universities Surge in Global Rankings as U.S. Schools Slip 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/u...
www.nytimes.com
January 16, 2026 at 10:07 AM
Chinese Universities Surge in Global Rankings as U.S. Schools Slip 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/u...
Nature: Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus www.nature.com/articles/s41... (read free: rdcu.be/eZgSz) 1/
January 16, 2026 at 9:58 AM
Nature: Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus www.nature.com/articles/s41... (read free: rdcu.be/eZgSz) 1/
Training large language models on narrow tasks can lead to broad misalignment www.nature.com/articles/s41...
January 16, 2026 at 9:46 AM
Training large language models on narrow tasks can lead to broad misalignment www.nature.com/articles/s41...
What a week! Weekly Recap (January 16, 2026): AIxBio, biotech 2025, Claude Code, Positron tips, cell fate engineering, academic slop, AI in health & life sciences research, #Rstats updates (R Data Scientist, R Weekly), RAG in R, papers & preprints doi.org/10.59350/06r...
Weekly Recap (January 16, 2026)
AIxBio, biotech 2025, Claude Code, Positron tips, cell fate engineering, academic slop, AI in health & life sciences research, R updates (R Data Scientist, R Weekly), RAG in R, papers & preprints
doi.org
January 16, 2026 at 9:40 AM
What a week! Weekly Recap (January 16, 2026): AIxBio, biotech 2025, Claude Code, Positron tips, cell fate engineering, academic slop, AI in health & life sciences research, #Rstats updates (R Data Scientist, R Weekly), RAG in R, papers & preprints doi.org/10.59350/06r...
Reposted by Stephen Turner
I didn't realize that the Positron status bar on the bottom left which shows what git branch you're on, is also clickable menu that pops up command palette options that let you change or create git branches.
[Via Stephen Turner 's R Package Development in Positron Workshop for Ukraine]
[Via Stephen Turner 's R Package Development in Positron Workshop for Ukraine]
January 15, 2026 at 6:05 PM
I didn't realize that the Positron status bar on the bottom left which shows what git branch you're on, is also clickable menu that pops up command palette options that let you change or create git branches.
[Via Stephen Turner 's R Package Development in Positron Workshop for Ukraine]
[Via Stephen Turner 's R Package Development in Positron Workshop for Ukraine]
Generative single-cell transcriptomics via LLMs www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧬🖥️🧪
Generative single-cell transcriptomics via large language models
Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics have generated vast atlases of cellular states, yet these data are almost exclusively used for analysis rather than generation. Here we introduce the LLM-based…
www.biorxiv.org
January 15, 2026 at 10:05 PM
Generative single-cell transcriptomics via LLMs www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧬🖥️🧪
Nature Machine Intelligence: Benchmarking large language models on safety risks in scientific laboratories www.nature.com/articles/s42...
January 15, 2026 at 10:05 PM
Nature Machine Intelligence: Benchmarking large language models on safety risks in scientific laboratories www.nature.com/articles/s42...