Michelle Franc Ragsac, PhD 🇵🇭🇺🇸
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mragsac.com
Michelle Franc Ragsac, PhD 🇵🇭🇺🇸
@mragsac.com

👩🏽‍💻 #FilipinoAmerican Postdoc 🧪 @ https://amariutalab.org studying #PediatricAsthma • #Bioinformatics PhD, PI: Emma Farley 💻🧬 & #Bioengineering BS, PI: Terry Gaasterland from @ucsandiego.bsky.social ☀️ • #InvisibleDisability 🌻 • She/Hers

Personal Account! ✨ .. more

Theresa Gaasterland is an American politician and scientist. She is a Professor of Computational Biology and Genomics and Director of the Scripps Genome Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She was elected a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) in 2018 for contributions to the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics. .. more

Biology 71%
Computer science 16%
My love for em dashes is as old as the hills and as mighty as my inability to make a transition between thoughts literally any other way and I will be damned if I let the clankers take that from me

At @ucsandiego.bsky.social, I had to take some art classes! I ended up taking Theater Design then Advanced Costume Design with the amazing Judith Dolan 🤩✨

Learning about fabrics and waves then definitely influences my clothing purchases nowadays, while graphic design helps with figure creation 🧪🥹🎨

OMG I was trying to remember the name of this podcast for the longest time 🤯

Thank you so much for sharing this recent episode by @ifbookspod.bsky.social 🥹 I'm looking forward to listening to this one along with several others that people have recommended!
ProPublica reporter @nicolefoy.bsky.social found that more than 170 U.S. citizens had been detained by immigration agents.

“The number became an important, irrefutable fact in the conversation about the immigration crackdown,” our editor-in-chief @sengelberg.bsky.social writes.
The Data Doesn’t Lie: How ProPublica Reports the Truth in an Era of False Claims
As federal data becomes less available, our journalists are doing shoe-leather reporting to provide readers with the precise numbers.
www.propublica.org

I had a small non-science-related win 👀 🧪 My doctor FINALLY sent in a referral for me to get an exploratory laparoscopy for endometriosis 😭 💖 It only took ~10 years 🥲

I've been pushing through a lot of pain with this #InvisibleIllness 🌻 lately--hopefully they're able to find what's wrong with me! 🫠

I saw when I was working for the engineering team at my previous company 🥲

When I interacted with the infrastructure folks, they were willing to sit down with me and explain software design decisions, etc. Whereas with my boss, he prioritized speed (and bad code) versus robustness and accuracy 🫠

I love the LGBTQIA+ ribbon! It's so pretty! 🏳️‍🌈 🤩
A study on 1.7 million people in Hong Kong shows superior hybrid immunity to Covid in people who got vaccinated before infection vs. people who got infected first. "Our findings are a direct rebuttal to arguments for natural immunity," the authors write. doi.org/10.1016/j.va...
Redirecting
doi.org

Looking forward to all of the demos the team has planned to learn more about AnVIL and how to use it for research! 🤩

Our lab is looking to use AnVIL after recent changes in NIST guidelines rendered EXPANSE at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at @ucsandiego.bsky.social non-compliant 🥲
"All is lost" narratives are popular because people generally do not want to take action. Taking action is tiring so if all is lost, you are off the hook. Nothing is more seductive than not having to do anything.

Reposted by Terry Gaasterland

Overall trust in scientists and medical professionals is still rather high (Pew 2024). And only about 7% of American/Canadian respondents in a study (Gravelle 2022) are stridently anti-vax.

MAHA is platforming views of a very small minority, to erode the majority.

Oh wow! How did you acquire the FASTQ file?? That's such a weird issue!

Reposted by Terry Gaasterland

NPR @npr.org · 5d
This is the first time Pantone has chosen a shade of white. The company says it's "a lofty white that serves as a symbol of calming influence in a society rediscovering the value of quiet reflection." n.pr/4rDF0jv
You read that white: Pantone's 2026 Color of the Year is 'Cloud Dancer'
This is the first time Pantone has chosen a shade of white. The company says it's "a lofty white that serves as a symbol of calming influence in a society rediscovering the value of quiet reflection."
n.pr
The Bay took over the highway during this morning's #KingTides in Marin.

DECEASED 💀

I was actually curious and totaled the amounts listed in my Billing Account tab 😰 These amounts don't include private clinic, dental, or vision visits either 🫠

Oh my goodness, I've been looking for an app like this to help manage my chronic health conditions! 🤯 Thank you so much for sharing it -- I'm looking forward to downloading it to try things out 🙏🏽 ✨

🤔 MyChart unwrapped ... ⚕️ 💭

💸 Medical appointments this year to date cost a grand total of $170,431.64 💸 Luckily, you have insurance! 🏥 ✨
🚑 You went to the Emergency Room TWICE this year, with one visit amounting to $16,920.81! 🤯
📹 You had 9 video visits, with most in Women's Health and Neurology 🧠
They should do MyChart Wrapped

Yes! That has happened to me MULTIPLE TIMES 🥲

I feel like I care a lot about reproducibility and robustness with my science and providing adequate documentation but ... efforts to get to that point aren't appreciated in the grand scheme of ✨ publishing novel things quickly in high impact places ✨

Reposted by Terry Gaasterland

Who defines what is “desired” as far as genetics qualities? What are the impacts to people who do not have the “desired” genetic qualities?

Even with new advances in the literature around genetics such as plasticity, there’s a clear power dynamic at play in the ways that we valorise genetics.

I now know the ins and outs of looking at VCFs, BCFs, PLINK BED files, and PLINK PGEN files ... But only after a chat about how I'm moving slow and taking longer than expected 😭

At least now the data is properly harmonized and I can trust the results I get out of it! 😅

My productivity has suffered and my progress was slow to those I've been working with 🫠 ...

So when I tried my data harmonization pipeline 🧬 💻 🧪 from the primary, untouched VCF files instead (vs. pre-processed files I was given 😬) and everything worked magically, it was VERY frustrating 😭

I've spent so much time cleaning and harmonizing various genetics datasets that I'm working with for my postdoctoral project and this whole ordeal feels like a lot of invisible work that isn't really appreciated (and sometimes feels looked down upon by my peers) 🫠 🧬 💻 🧪
12 former commissioners of the FDA came together to write a Perspectives piece for the New England Journal of Medicine; raising our concerns about recent changes to vaccine approval policy at the FDA and its implications for patients and public health.
They should do MyChart Wrapped
This is a gift. Thank you to @siembranc.bsky.social for sharing this new toolkit with what they did when Border Patrol showed up in NC: docs.google.com/document/d/1... - share far and wide especially with our comrades in MN and LA (New Orleans esp).
Toolkit: how we dealt with Border Patrol
In November 2025, Border Patrol announced it would be coming to Charlotte, North Carolina. We only had a few days’ notice. Just like in Chicago and Los Angeles, they weren’t coming to “keep the peace....
docs.google.com

Thank you so much for your message 🥹 It's hard sometimes but ... I think I might try this re-framing as I'm going through this flareup 🥲

Reposted by Terry Gaasterland

As I always do with boycotts, I urge: be tough with corporations, gentle with individual buyers. For some people, Black Friday sales are the way they get their kids jackets that fit, shoes that hold up to the weather. Yelling at them doesn’t help the cause.

Despite trying my best to work while manage my health, it hurts to hear from others that I don’t work as fast or my research output is lacking 🧪🧬💻

Sometimes I feel like I’m working twice as hard with physical and nerve pain, brain fog, and exhaustion … but none of that counts 😭 🥲

#AcademicChatter

I’m taking Letrazole now and the side effects are so bad?! 🫠

As somebody with two herniated discs, a surgically fused SI joint, and general nerve damage in my legs, the additional bone and joint pain doesn’t help 😭

It’s hard to focus when my body is actively working against me all the time … 🥲