In case you missed it, my friends at Caltech Letters are making podcasts now! Here's a fun discussion led by my colleague Aditi Narayanan about the origin of life—one of my favorite scientific topics. caltechletters.org/podcasts/biosp…

Ever needed advice on how to handle a pipetting robot or the escape of a massive colony of vicious ants? We offer some tips, but mistakes may be a necessary, albeit painful, teacher. Check out the finale of Biosphere Podcast (on hiatus) first season! caltechletters.org/podcasts/biosp…

It was a real pleasure to talk with Heidi Klumpe in our season one finale! Make no mistake: it's a fun episode. 😊

Another paper with Michael Heethoff 📯 @[email protected]. This time on fatty acid biosynthesis and fatty acid metabolism in #Archegozetes (link.springer.com/article/10.100…).

Looking for objects that doesn’t glow in a place without starlight is incredibly difficult. Hear how Mia de los Reyes brings to light both the hidden parts of space and the importance of increasing diversity in science in chapter 3 of Not My Thesis! ow.ly/QcYm50ATYsH

Another exciting chapter of our sibling podcast!

Genome of my most favorite oribatid mite (and animal in general) now up on BioRxiv - Molecular evolutionary trends and biosynthesis pathways in the Oribatida revealed by the genome of Archegozetes longisetosus disq.us/t/3tgj3xl Acarological Society

High quality, long-read oribatid mite genome assembly now available!! A true labor of love by postdoc extraordinaire, Adrian Brueckner.

Great to work with Adrian Brueckner and Tom Naragon on this little bug! Lesson from Adrian: if you find an interesting insect, throw it on the GC-MS. You never know what you'll find!

How do animals avoid getting lost when exploring an environment in complete darkness? By combining computational modeling and experiments in a specialized arena, we found that fruit flies perform local search by carefully measuring how far they walk. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Germline CRISPR knockouts officially working in Dalotia coriaria. White -/- on the right!

A new insect glamour portrait, in honor of paper by Adrian Brueckner @Pselaphinae and team!

The tiny rove beetle has a lesson to teach us about the development of organs and cellular cooperation, say researchers in @Pselaphinae's lab. caltech.edu/about/news/a-b…

Checkout round 2 of the MABe Challenge on unsupervised, video-based behavior representation learning. One challenge involves videos from @Pselaphinae's group of rove beetles and ants. These beetles disguise themselves as ants to infiltrate their colonies youtube.com/watch?v=MfXChq…

Four more shows to go! Come see me sing, dance, and generally have a blast in the first musical I've ever been in! Playing a lead, so you'll get to see me on stage a whole lot!

A Xenodusa rove beetle with its Camponotus host ant, collected by @Pselaphinae and Jordan Rainey in Montana. Such a joy to photograph this incredible symbiont. Tom Naragon and I have dreamed of finding this beetle many times.

Please R/T: Our video representation learning challenge for multi-agent animal behavior is going on now! Deadline July 3. More info here: aicrowd.com/challenges/mul… Led by Jennifer J. Sun & Ann Kennedy

Excited and proud that #gget is finally out! :) biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Got to love the turtles that keep us company in the ponds around Caltech!

I'm looking for PhD students and postdocs to start Fall 2023 at MIT in my brand new lab! If you are interested in working on impact-driven computer vision research for the environment, biodiversity, conservation, and sustainability, please apply and list me in your application!!