Jacob Trefethen
@JacobTref
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Managing director @coeff_giving, science
San Francisco, CA
Joined June 2015
Will AI solve medicine? We decided to be as definitive as is possible in 2025. That meant going long, through the drug development process Parts 1. Clashing worldviews 2. Drug discovery 3. Models 4. Efficacy 5. Safety 6. Manufacturing & healthcare 7. Funding 8. Trust & ambition
This year @demishassabis predicted AI could cure all disease in a decade. But Claus Wilke & Derek Lowe say biology is far more complex, or progress will be limited by clinical trials & economics. In a new 4hr episode of the Hard Drugs podcast, we answer: Will AI solve medicine
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NSF is launching one of the most ambitious experiments in federal science funding in 75 years. The program is called Tech Labs, and the goal is to invest ~$1 billion to seed new institutions of science and technology for the 21st century. Instead of funding projects, the NSF
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.@indevmag's first call for pitches is up! Tell us a compelling story about how something works — or fails to work — in the developing world. 2k-4k words, rolling review through Jan. 12
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Excited to finally share about Astera Neuro, our new neuroscience research program @AsteraInstitute with the amazing @doristsao taking the leap to lead it. We’re seeking to understand how the brain constructs conscious experience and what those principles could teach us about
We’re launching Astera Neuro, a new neuroscience research effort led by @doristsao as Chief Scientist. Our aim is to unravel a profound scientific mystery: how the brain transforms sensory inputs into conscious experience. Advancing this work could illuminate the computational
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Hepatitis Delta is a sorely neglected health condition, even relative to other hepatitis variants. But are there good ways for funders to make progress? Douglas Chukwu Junior investigated the issue, and shares his findings in a new shallow investigation (link in thread).
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Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. https://t.co/hDQhDL5rR1
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Maximum City, Suketa Mehta, Vintage/Penguin Random House (this one must exist somewhere...) Long Shot: Vaccines for National Defense, Kendall Hoyt, Harvard University Press Innovation Breakdown, Joseph Gulfo, Post Hill Press
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Thom Gunn, Michael Nott, Farrar, Straus and Giroux In Pursuit of Unicorns: A Journey Through 50 Years of Biotechnology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press Breakthrough: The Quest for Life-Changing Medicines, William Pao, Oneworld Publications
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The Statue Within: An Autobiography, François Jacob, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press Making an African City, Jennifer Hart, Indiana University Press The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air, Bruno Strasser and Thomas Schlich, Yale University Press
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Personal vibe coding request: Audioboon Website where you submit books you wish had audiobook versions, upvote system, maybe kickstarter-like precommit to buy. Publishers get extra demand signal, authors can direct fans there List of books I’d submit below, please add more…!
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Asimov Press has been a wonderful part of my reading experience over the last two years. Prolific and accessible magazine-length pieces. If you’re interested in science, I recommend subscribing!
press.asimov.com
Asimov Press publishes an online magazine and books about scientific progress, especially in biology, and features writing from some of the world's foremost thinkers.
Today marks a major milestone at @AsimovPress: Our two-year anniversary! We formally launched the magazine in December 2023; a tiny team of two operating from inside @AsimovBio. In 2024, we published 49 articles, including a History of the Micropipette, an argument about why
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well, not just attenuating microbes, inactivating them too. There’s an activation function pun somewhere here. ReLU to no-flu…
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Attenuation Is All You Need We cover the invention of 20 vaccines from the 1700s through 1970. Technology (smallpox vaccine) preceding scientific understanding (germ theory), then speeding up once theory is established from experiments (maggots…) & new tools made (agar plates)
Imagine you lived in the 18th century. Smallpox kills 1 in 3 cases. Yet you can’t culture pathogens, don’t know germ theory, and have no idea what a virus is. How would you invent a vaccine? In a new episode of HARD DRUGS, we trace the history of vaccines! Let’s start with
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Can now confirm it smells good too
From today, our subscribers will be receiving the print edition of Works in Progress in the mail. You can preview one of issue 21's articles now – on how inflatable space stations will allow us to begin colonising space using technology we already have. https://t.co/wLTaO61kK6
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turns out everything nabla’s model claims it can do, chai’s can too! so i guess the suspicion that developability being a naturally emergent property of a well-trained model is true the GPCR result also seems emergent (surprising!), given that chai-2 could do it from the start
Today, we’re releasing new data showing that Chai-2 can design antibodies against challenging targets with atomic precision. >86% of our designs possess industry-standard drug-quality properties without any optimization. Thread👇
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When I published this in August, I got some (light) pushback that I’d jumped the gun on #3. It is true that protein design is ahead of small molecules and other modalities. Yet with BoltzGen since, and yesterday JAM-2 & Chai-2’s antibody results… my goodness are proteins green.
I just released an essay series on a topic I've been thinking about, on and off, for a few years: What does AI progress mean for medical progress? Many people working on AI dream it will help cure cancer and prevent disease. I wanted to create a more specific roadmap:
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Honoured to have been named one of Vox's Future Perfect 25. The entire @PopVaxIndia team shares the credit for this recognition of our work! Thanks @voxdotcom @pratikmpawar @IzzieRamirez @bryanrwalsh!
@sohamsankaran left a Cornell PhD during the pandemic to tackle vaccine inequality. In 2021, he founded @PopVaxIndia to build broad mRNA vaccines that protect against entire virus families. His AI-driven approach is getting noticed. #FuturePerfect25
https://t.co/N2zhtu8kcx
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After three extraordinary years shaping ARIA’s foundation, I’m excited to share that Kathleen Fisher will be the agency’s next CEO. /1
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Here are 30 great essays about biology. I consider these to be my "personal canon," and think that they are all basically perfect in their own ways, despite being different in form and style. All have shaped my own writing considerably. I'm not including links here, but you can
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