PhD| Scicomm. Consultant @IAVI Past: @Sci_Rio @igibsocial @IITKgp @MohandasCollege @KVS_HQ
India 🇮🇳
Joined February 2024
- Tweets10K
- Following334
- Followers432
- Likes28.2K
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
"Do your own research," they said.
So I did
28 years, a medical degree, a PhD, and three postgraduate diplomas in infectious diseases later, I conclude that vaccines save millions of lives and do not cause autism.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
We underestimate how much human potential gets crushed by the struggle to survive. Somewhere, there’s a genius working double shifts who hasn’t had the energy to create anything in months because they’re too fucking exhausted just trying to stay afloat.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
Very bad news for the international PhD students in the US:
A new Proposed Rule requires $70,000 in fees for an OPT application.
Let’s say you’re a PhD graduate. If you want to stay in the US after graduation, the New Rule will require you to pay $70,000 if you want to work as a postdoc or in industry.
Technically, OPT extends your ‘educational’ status.
Normally, as a PhD student, you’re on a J-1 or F-1 visa.
After defense, you often apply for an Optional Practical Training (OPT) to continue your visa status. It allows you to be hired in a company or university (e.g. as a postdoc) for several years before you can get a green card or another status (like H1B).
📍 If the proposed rule is enacted:
- The vast majority of international PhD students will leave the country after graduation.
- Far fewer international students will be signing up for PhD programs in the US from abroad.
Personally, I don’t understand it.
Why paying so much for top-tier education & training, and then WASTING it all by not letting people stay and build technologies for the country?
These barriers will deter so many bright talents... Very sad.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
Ok. I’ve spent a whole day celebrating Karl Deisseroth’s very deserved Nobel (with every other brain enthusiast!). Now let’s talk about the brilliance of Dr. Michelle Monje, his wife.
A Stanford physician, neuroscientist and recipient of a MacArthur Genius grant, Michelle has helped pioneer cancer neuroscience, revealing how brain activity can fuel tumor growth and opening new possibilities for treatment.
And I say all this because I’ve been lucky to see her work firsthand and have been awe struck since the moment I met her. What makes Michelle extraordinary is the combination of scientific brilliance and her absolute unwavering commitment to children with devastating brain cancers. She is pushing the science forward because those children and their families cannot afford to wait.
Everybody deserves to know @michelle_monje.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
Excited to share my publication LncRNA TAAL Regulates TIE1-Mediated Vascular Remodeling and Is Associated With Diabetic Retinopathy in ATVB ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/… @MotianiRaj1 @sridharsivasubb @vinodscaria @ikaurs2009 @unescorcb #lncRNA #zebrafish #Retinopathy
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
Lalremsiami from Mizoram.
Salman Khan from Uttar Pradesh.
Ancy Sojan from Kerala.
Gurvindervir Singh from Punjab.
Yashvir Singh from Haryana.
So many more stories.
India - in all her glory - stood on the podium. 😍🇮🇳
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
150K visits on my first vibe project in 24hrs.
💀This is crazy, look at the feature death list requests:
1. The Death Clock: Prediction of "Runway Remaining" based on burn rate and last funding date.
2. Mass Exodus Tracker: Alerts when headcount drops >15% in a single month (The "Sinking Ship" signal).
3. The Pivot Detector: Flags desperate business model shifts (e.g., changing bio from "Crypto" to "AI").
4. Silence Watch: Identifies "Zombie" companies: site is up, but zero blog posts or tweets for >6 months.
5. Bubble Heatmap: Visualizes sectors with massive funding inflow but low revenue/traffic metrics.
6. The Ratio of Doom: High Valuation vs. Low Employee count anomalies (The "Paper Unicorn" detector).
7. VC Widowmakers: Tracks which Venture Capital firms have the highest portfolio failure rates.
8. Clone Wars Casualties: A catalog of failed "Uber for X" clones in fragmented markets (Asia/Africa).
9. Crypto Graveyard: Dedicated archive for the thousands of dead Web3, NFT, and DAO projects.
10. Talent Auction: A feed of engineering teams currently being laid off from collapsing firms.
11. IP & Domain Sale: Marketplace for the assets of liquidated companies (The true "Loot Drop").
12. Deadware Index: Catalog of open-source tools and libraries abandoned by failed startups.
13. Autopsy Reports: Verified founders anonymously submit "Why we actually failed" stories.
14. Short Seller Leaderboard: Users vote/bet on which "Hype" startup will fold next.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
Reaching a century on this planet is a momentous milestone, but filling those 100 years with pioneering science, visionary institution-building, and relentless curiosity makes it truly extraordinary. Dr G P Talwar is a legend. I write here about him in @the_hindu
Since joining the founding faculty of AIIMS New Delhi, G.P. Talwar has never stopped working at the bench. Along the way, he developed the world’s first leprosy vaccine, a hormonal birth control vaccine, founded India’s first immunology institution, mentored hundreds of students, and continues his research as he begins his second century.
✍️ @dineshcsharma
thehindu.com/sci-tech/health…
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
We have Brahmins who have dominated all institutions of science & tech for 80 years tell you that India lags behind in tech because of reservations, and Baniyas who have done the same for trade and industry tell you that India is poor because of democracy and welfare schemes.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
For any athlete or fan, nothing is more satisfying than seeing your country’s flag on top! 🇮🇳
- Just look at the raw emotions of India’s 4x400m Gold-winning team! 🥹🥇
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
Vithya Ramraj just broke PT Usha’s 42-year-old national record in the 400m hurdles: 54.75 seconds. The record had stood since the 1984 LA Olympics.
The real story is her twin sister, Nithya Ramraj. Nithya works at the Income Tax Department. When Vithya had no national camp support, Nithya quietly paid for all her training from her own salary.
Maybe that’s the beautiful thing about siblings: your dream can become their dream too.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
Saying 'I never experienced casteism' is basically saying 'I belong to a dominant caste'.
Saying 'I did not know my caste till 10th grade' is a privilege only someone from a dominant caste can afford.
Casteism is real. Racism is real. White privilege is real. Male privilege is real.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
As a STEM graduate & a PhD, let me tell you all this is sheer unadulterated nonsense. Please ignore such uninformed & dangerously false assertions.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
I don't care how you were raised.
Unlearn your racism. Unlearn your misogyny. Unlearn your homophobia.
You're an adult now.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
Reading proofs from book & remembering what I wrote in 2015:
"I am very concerned about the future of AI. Not because of the risk of rogue machines taking over. But because of the homogeneous, one-dimensional group of men who are currently involved in advancing the technology.”
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
We are literally watching tech billionaires rebrand the oldest religious doomsday cult in human history. "The world is going to end, but if you give us absolute, unregulated power, we alone can save you." It is a psychological extortion racket and we are just letting them do it.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
Everything in the news but the Super El Niño that is already knocking down the front door. We’re facing droughts, floods, famines in a few months but a stupid unrealistic scifi plot is what all mainstream media is obsessed w. No lessons learned from Covid despite adv of hindsight
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
I don’t think anyone is prepared for the market crash that will come Monday after this AI slowdown messaging from the CEOs of the 3 largest LLM providers.
This is the sound of the AI bubble bursting.
Samatha Mathew (She/her) retweeted
Imagine you’re a conman. You’ve said for years you have MAGIC BEANS. You’ve shown lots of REALLY BIG normal beans that you made in your lab.
“Almost there!” you say—over and over.
Now, you have *almost* convinced the villagers to give you TWO TRILLION DOLLARS.
But while the beans keep getting bigger. No magic yet…
What do you do? That money is SO CLOSE.
“I know!” you think, “instead of MAGIC beans, lets’s make them KILLER BEANS.”
So you pump up your beans up SUPER BIG and you say: “I’m sorry, but these BEANS ARE GETTING BIGGER ON THEIR OWN!” You threaten people that if they don’t give you the money, the beans may get into the WRONG HANDS. They might get BIGGER THAN THE EARTH!
The villagers, aghast, run to and fro arguing whether the beans are going to kill everyone or make them all rich.
“Well, either way,” the idiots in the village conclude, “We’d better give him the money.”
