Andrew Kennard @askennard@qoto.org
- Website
- https://andrewkennard.github.io
- Google Scholar
- https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ifhxikkAAAAJ
Cell biologist and biophysicist studying evolutionary cell biology.
I'm interested in how amoebae divide, especially relatives of the "brain-eating amoeba"
I study this with microscopy, image analysis, and comparative genomics.
Postdoc at UMass Amherst Biology, PhD in Biophysics from Stanford.
I also love jazz and nature photography!
searchable
Joined Nov 2022
Andrew Kennard
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Alright, so, I am finally here and totally late to the party but I'm here!
Andrew Kennard
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18/ #31nightsofhalloween #MicrosCreepy
Here's an amoeba imaged by scanning electron microscreepy!
Andrew Kennard
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In the endless discussion of #Mastodon over #Bluesky (which, btw, really, we all should move on if not away from it and it would be about time), I am amazed bout the quantity of people posting (on Mastodon) that scholars post more on Bluesky than here, bc (insert whatever feature of Twitter).
Maybe it's bc I'm tired and sleepy today, but considering the endless stream of complaining here, wouldn't it be better for the #AcademicFedi to stop comparing and start posting about their work?
Andrew Kennard
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Very cool preprint from the Fritz-Laylin lab - "Genetic transformation of the frog-killing chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis" https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.17.561934v1
Andrew Kennard
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17/ #31NightsofHalloween #MicrosCreepy
Here's a closer look at the cell division fail from yesterday. The contractile vacuole network gets distributed through the cell during division- here you can see tubules converting to bladders that pump unusually synchronously
GIF
Andrew Kennard
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16/ #31nightsofhalloween #MicrosCreepy
These are the cells that created yesterday's maximum intensity projection! Featuring one failed cell division, and one successful cell division. Lots of contractile vacuole activity.
GIF
Andrew Kennard
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15/ #31NightsOfHalloween #MicrosCreepy
A max intensity projection of crawling and dividing cells
@tommyyum wouldn’t some behaviors, like smoking, lead people to develop certain similar facial features? Feels like a lot of causality from face to behavior could easily run the other way
Andrew Kennard
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“Graduate student mentorship as a target for diversifying biology.”
Girish Kale and Reinier Prosee cover a recent preprint from researchers #UCBerkeley. Particularly excited to note the positive impact of informal mentorship & being part of interdisciplinary groups that the students report as part of this study. #preLightsPeerSupport
#preLight 
https://prelights.biologists.com/highlights/mentoring-practices-predictive-of-doctoral-student-outcomes-in-a-biological-sciences-cohort-v2/
Andrew Kennard
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12/ #31nightsofhalloween #microscreepy
I got to play with a very cool microscope today!
purple: actin
orange: mitotic spindle
Andrew Kennard
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New blog post just dropped!
"Assembly theory is cool... but doesn't quite do what its inventors say it does."
http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/assembly-theory-is-cool
reviewing this recent Nature paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06600-9
news & views here:
Andrew Kennard
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8/#31NightsOfHalloween #MicrosCreepy
A twirling flagellate
GIF
Andrew Kennard
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I wanted to consolidate a few thoughts on google, misinformation, large language models, enshittification, and the fate of the web as we know it.
It started when Carl Zimmer shared this remarkable example of Google being fooled by machine-generated bullshit online.
Andrew Kennard
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It's #MicrosCreepy season!
Here's an experiment that went horribly wrong
GIF
Andrew Kennard
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7/ #31nightsofhalloween #microscreepy
Gummy worms!
... or the tracks of cells before (green) vs after (orange) being squashed to a 5 micron ceiling. They tend to crawl faster when squished. Circles are the pillars holding up the ceiling.
@CellySally wow this is fun! Though there is no hope for me to do well, just not how my brain works 
. I’m going to try the easy mode!
Andrew Kennard
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Bungee Beetle Escape!
My son has been learning to code so that he can write his own game, and here, after many many weekends of effort, it is! It's fun!
I had to get him to add 'easy mode' (AKA mum mode) to give me a chance of getting beyond level one. Level three remains, for me, a place only heard tell of in legend.
If you give it a go then feedback is welcome - it is a work in progress.
Andrew Kennard
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Effective science isn't about a final publication; it's about the availability of data generated by research for reanalysis and reuse.
A healthy scientific workflow should make it trivial to incorporate prior data into your work.
Enter SciDataFlow's new simple feature: Assets
Andrew Kennard
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The moderator is really important.
If a talk is really bad, it's usually only the PIs who can come up with a cogent question.
I think a good moderator should know the seminar was a stinker and if so just let the PIs ask questions. If it was a fantastic talk, that is when to pause before picking a PI question or cajole students to ask questions.
Having the moderator choose the questioner is ideal, because the speaker usually has tunnel vision.
@JoseEdGomes I agree that the most important component of any potential strategy is a moderator that actually cares about the end goal of encouraging trainee participation, and acts deliberately to achieve that goal! Otherwise it’s just so much more meaningless posturing.
- Website
- https://andrewkennard.github.io
- Google Scholar
- https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ifhxikkAAAAJ
Cell biologist and biophysicist studying evolutionary cell biology.
I'm interested in how amoebae divide, especially relatives of the "brain-eating amoeba"
I study this with microscopy, image analysis, and comparative genomics.
Postdoc at UMass Amherst Biology, PhD in Biophysics from Stanford.
I also love jazz and nature photography!
searchable
Joined Nov 2022
