Harmit Singh Malik

@harmitmalik.bsky.social

15205 Followers 4373 Following

Study genetic conflicts professionally. Try to avoid conflicts in personal life (with mixed results). Fred Hutch Basic Sciences, UW Genome Sciences, HHMI. Posting in a personal capacity. My posts don’t reflect my employers’ opinions.

Cover page of DC comics’ first issue of “The new Golden Age”
Cover page of DC comics’ first issue of “The new Golden Age”
A reminder: the scientific accomplishments of serial sexual harassers do not make up for the grievous injury caused to science & young scientists over generations (even if this were a simple math argument which... WTF!). This 'genius myth' protects such folks in the first place.
Happy birthday cake with the numbers ‘23’ signifying 23rd birthday
Microsoft prompt in Drafts folder says: "Nothing in Drafts. Start writing something fabulous."
Matthew Cobb getting ready to give the Grace lecture
Menu for Dishoom restaurant in London
Simple poster states “Someone is out there holding their breath waiting for you to fail. Make sure they suffocate.”
How important do you feel discovery research and ‘basic’ science is for understanding disease? Well, I have a little bit of a biased view on the topic, since I'm a basic scientist myself. The lab has made more and more discoveries with very strong therapeutic implications, and often people ask me why we are not pursuing these further ourselves. Part of it is that I think about this very much as an ecosystem. People have different skills – I have colleagues who are very good at the application side of things and I have other colleagues, including people in my lab, who are very good at the basic science. There are a lot of very smart people at every stage in the ecosystem and, sometimes, we have to acknowledge that we can't all be experts in every step. A lot of basic science discoveries will end up having profound implications in the clinic – if you don't have the full imagination about how to get it there, that's okay, because you're still a very important piece of the jigsaw puzzle and other people can help. If the basic science discoveries didn't exist, then it's quite possible that the well would run dry. We cannot simply rely on the idea that the therapies currently in clinical trials are going to be enough because we already know that – for diseases, such as cancer, and with rapidly evolving viruses – there needs to be a constant influx of new ideas to stay ahead of the arms race. I'd also make a plug for the fact that, ultimately, we are all interested in human disease, but disease research in humans is not ethical or possible. This is why creating and studying model organisms in a high-throughput, low-investment context is incredibly important. We cannot just say ‘okay, we're going to stop work on anything that is not related to human research’, because – actually – it's all relevant to humans.
Mount Rainier (Tacoma/Tahoma)
Boats at the Gateway of India in Mumbai
From Disappointing affirmations: Do something nice for someone today. Leave them alone. Life is hard enough without your bullshit.
An electric lamp is missing a bulb and has a sticker that says, "I still work, but the light in me is gone."
Each year, winners of mentoring awards get a bobblehead made in their honor. This photo has bobbleheads of recipients of this year's faculty mentor awardee (Dr. James Alvarez) and non-faculty mentor awardee (Aida Flor de la Cruz, lab manager, Malik lab)
Screenshot from updated cdc advisory saying that it’s quite possible, likely even that childhood vaccines cause autism. Which is a baldfaced lie.
Sign in airplane bathroom says that good hand washing takes 20 seconds OR the time it takes to sing Happy Birthday twice
Dr. Melanie McReynolds, queen of all things NAD+ in biochem dept at Penn State
Photo of book “Thriving as an International Scientist” written by Sonali Majumdar