Looking forward!

First step in a community project to provide a uniformly assembled, annotated and searchable set of bacterial genomes, our preprint on our initial release of 1.9 million genome assemblies+taxonomic estimates. (figure compares with previous 661k dataset) biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott responds to being called the city’s “DEI mayor” “What they mean by DEI, in my opinion, is duly elected incumbent.”

"Any enterprise that has a homogenous workforce, is by definition not recognizing a meritocracy"

I was at DC this week participating in the American Institute of Biological Sciences Congressional Visits Day and I had to share the obligatory Capitol picture. Special thanks to AIBS for the EPPL Award and the Congressional Offices from Iowa and Illinois for receiving us!

🚨The FTC is finalizing a rule banning noncompete clauses for *all workers* regardless of income or industry. It will increase pay, new business formation, innovation -- and cut health care costs. It's one of the most important things the Biden Administration has done.

Efraín Rodríguez Ocasio, Ph.D.

¡Bien merecido!

Join us in San Diego for the inaugural CMiC meeting! Accepting abstracts until July 9. To policy folks: we will have a session on Microbiome Policy, Advocacy, and Regulation. Reach out to me if you are interested in giving a talk.

I can’t believe the GOP is running an old guy for president. Yikes.

Excited to announce two upcoming events from EBRC's student and postdoc association! First, next Thursday Sept 26 @ 2:30 pm PT / 5:30 pm ET we're hosting a workshop to help with writing graduate fellowship applications! Register here: forms.gle/PGbdyYxo2mS7vn…

me, locking in and getting ready for unprecedented levels of screen time over the next 48 hours

Quick career update: I just joined Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) as a Keegstra Bioenergy Fellow. I will be co-advised by Brian Pfleger at UW-Madison and Christos Maravelias at Princeton.

The next EBRC SPA panel is Jan 28! Please RT/share! 🧬 Are you an undergrad or Master’s student and applying to graduate school or thinking about it? 📺 Attend our panel to learn about interviews and choosing a program/lab! 🔗 Register here: forms.gle/YTPvQ8ZewGc9z7…

In response to the federal directive issued on Feb. 7, 2025 to change the Facilities and Administration rate for all existing and ongoing new NIH research awards, UW–Madison has issued the following statement. news.wisc.edu/uw-madison-res…

Booker finally yields after more than 25 hours of speaking 👏👏👏

BREAKING: This is one of the most chilling Judicial opinions I have ever read. The Conservative 4th Circuit Federal Appeals court Judge in the Abrego Garcia case stated: "The way that the administration is behaving appears to signal a crumbling of American democracy”. He

Last week I joined the Maravelias group at Princeton as a visiting scholar. During my stay here, I will be training in biorefinery modeling (Pyomo/GAMS) with the goal of integrating metabolic models with process simulation and systems-level analyses as part of my GLBRC project.