Grace Kaul

Out today in @ScienceMagazine: with the amazing Haochuan Cui, Yiling Lin, & @LingfeiWu, we analyzed 3.6 million scientists publishing 1960–2020. The findings reshape a century-old debate about age and scientific creativity.

#TheWorldReport | History has been made in deep space today. NASA’s Artemis II crew has shattered a 55-year record, flying behind the moon, and is now heading home after a breathtaking journey farther than any humans before

Lucknow is synonymous with a vibrant culture, at the core of which is a great culinary culture. I am glad that UNESCO has recognised this aspect of Lucknow and I call upon people from around the world to visit Lucknow and discover its uniqueness.

This year’s chemistry laureate Omar Yaghi was born in Amman, Jordan, in 1965 to parents who were refugees from Palestine. When we spoke to him he shared his story: “I grew up in a very humble home, we were a dozen of us in one room, sharing it with the cattle that we used to raise. I was born in a family of refugees, and my parents could barely read or write. My father finished sixth grade and my mother couldn’t read or write. It’s quite a journey. Science allows you to do it. Science is the greatest equalising force in the world. Smart people, talented people, skilled people exist everywhere. That’s why we really should focus on unleashing their potential through providing them with opportunity.” Today Yaghi shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson for their work developing metal–organic frameworks. Learn more about the prize: nobelprize.org/prizes/chemist…

BREAKING NEWS The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2025 #NobelPrize in Chemistry to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi “for the development of metal–organic frameworks.”

Engaging interview by my former PhD student Dr Ankita Jaiswal on her microfluidic device A-beta detection work. biopatrika.com/academia/resea… @IITKanpur @Director_IITK

For over a century, the hunt for new antibiotics has focused almost exclusively on bacteria and fungi. Today, that paradigm shifts. By coupling state-of-the-art AI with the vast, largely uncharted diversity of Archaea, we open a new frontier for molecular discovery. Our APEX model sifted through hundreds of archaeal proteomes in silico, revealing a previously hidden family of antimicrobial peptides we call “archaeasins.” Of the 80 candidates we synthesized, 93% were active against pathogenic microbes in vitro, and one—archaeasin-73—matched the in-vivo efficacy of last-resort drugs such as polymyxin B. These results show that the marriage of deep learning and evolutionary diversity can surface potent therapeutics at digital speed, expanding the antibiotic toolbox when humanity needs it most. Archaea, once thought biologically esoteric, now stand alongside bacteria and fungi as a rich reservoir of useful molecules. We are excited to keep discovering antibiotics at digital speed with AI. Link to the paper @NatureMicrobiol @NaturePortfolio: nature.com/articles/s4156…

For years I have dreamt of a tool that could neutralize pathogens the moment they emerge. Today we unveil ApexOracle—an AI that, from a pathogen’s genome and phenotypic knowledge alone, predicts which antibiotics will work and invents new molecules for threats it has never seen. Antimicrobial resistance is quietly eroding the very foundations of modern medicine. By fusing deep genomic insight with molecular diffusion modelling, ApexOracle translates genetic code into actionable insight: it anticipates potency, proposes bespoke compounds, and does so swiftly enough to potentially blunt an outbreak before it begins—a first glimpse of real-time antibiotic discovery. And this is just the beginning. We are presenting the AI model today and working on ground-truth experiments. I can’t wait to share what’s next. arxiv.org/abs/2507.07862

ACS Infectious Diseases highlights the contributions of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars researching within the various subfields covered in the journal. Read more on ACS Axial: go.acs.org/cRN

@Sandeep_1966 Thank you sir for your invaluable guidance and support🙏🏻

Incisive views! Wishing you well, Grace. You’re an amazing scientist!!

My views highlighting the importance of interdisciplinarity in the field of infectious disease research! Thank you to the ACS ID editorial team and my amazing mentors for the opportunity! @ACSPublications @ACSBioMed @Sandeep_1966 @skchopra007 axial.acs.org/medicinal-chem…

The best thing in academic chatter this week

Ever wondered how to mine for and generate new antimicrobial peptides from scratch? We show how to do it with AI in our latest piece in Accounts of Chemical Research @ACSPublications. Led by Paulina Szymczak, with @luispedrocoelho, Jun Wang, Ewa Szczurek! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…

Go beyond the lab with Prof. Sandeep Verma - acclaimed scientist, academic leader, and educator at IIT Kanpur. In this candid interview, he talks about his journey in science, the joy of teaching, and what inspires him beyond research. A closer look at the person behind the accolades. youtu.be/aH0SC5Ua6lg #IITKFaculty #BeingCandid #Science #AcademicLife #leadership #teteatete #IITKanpur #iitk

Serious question. How does one treat this UTI?

In the right conditions, antibiotic resistance can happen extremely fast. Here is an example from my own work of bacteria overcoming an antibiotic in just eleven days in a giant petri dish: 1/

New online! Global health perspectives on antibacterial drug discovery and the preclinical pipeline nature.com/articles/s4157…

”David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, your ground-breaking work in computational protein design and protein structure prediction has revolutionised these fields. It has opened up completely new possibilities to design proteins that have never been seen before, and we now have access to predicted structures of all 200 million known proteins. These are truly great achievements.” Watch the very moment the chemistry laureates received their Nobel Prize diplomas and medals during the 2024 Nobel Prize award ceremony. #NobelPrize

Happy #gurupurab and शुभ देव दीपावली! #ECBS-2024 concluded on a high note with excellent lectures, great camaraderie, and new friendships. Till we meet again. Auf wiedersehen 👋👋