Michelle Heck

The Heck Lab is moving south in 2026! I’m honored to be joining Virginia Tech as Director of the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, where I will also have a faculty appointment. 🌱🧬👩‍🔬 I am grateful for my nearly 20 years of public service with USDA–ARS at Cornell & Boyce Thompson Institute, which shaped my commitment to collaborative research and solutions-driven science. Stay tuned for job announcements & Heck lab updates! news.vt.edu/articles/2025/…

In case you missed it, I testified this morning before the House Appropriations Subcommittee, sharing the value and impact of NIH-funded research. appropriations.house.gov/schedule/heari…

Take this opportunity to learn about the latest advances HLB management.

If you are in Florida and want to learn more about the USDA Grove-First project, check out the Florida Citrus Show!!

@Dating_Dynamics In the Catholic faith, all of these are discussed during pre-cana, except what to do during divorce.

A therapist who spent 40 years counseling couples on the brink of divorce wrote down the one conversation she wishes every couple would have before they get married. She said: "If you have this conversation honestly, you will either save yourself decades of pain or build a foundation that can survive anything." Here is the conversation…

@AOV_OlmedoVelar My data are on cds! 😂

@VectorBioSpace You can still do it 😅

Last of better late than never for my PhD. Happy to share the preprint for the last chapter of my thesis where we characterize virus populations in flat (Brevipalpus) mites, and how they connect with the important plant viruses they transmit

Who needs Cupid when you've got a dropbox? 💘 Happy Valentine's Day from all of us at Plasmidsaurus! 💌 🦖

Postdoc Vs PhD Student

Congratulations!

@MaizeMeristem Thanks Dave!! I would not be here without you!

@VectorBioSpace Wow, congratulations! An exciting move and I am sure you will do fantastic things there!

The Heck Lab is moving south in 2026! I’m honored to be joining Virginia Tech as Director of the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, where I will also have a faculty appointment. 🌱🧬👩‍🔬 I am grateful for my nearly 20 years of public service with USDA–ARS at Cornell & Boyce Thompson Institute, which shaped my commitment to collaborative research and solutions-driven science. Stay tuned for job announcements & Heck lab updates! news.vt.edu/articles/2025/…

@CornellCSCU I will miss you and definitely will be keeping in touch!

@VectorBioSpace Congratulations, Michelle!

@Edel_PLopez Absolutely!!!

@VectorBioSpace Wow! Congratulations 🥳 can’t wait to visit! 👏

Today, we had @osse_de84469 teaching her protein expression and purification skills learnt at @CSHL

@szintri Insane

Regents voted. I work at a university that will no longer have Statistics.

@AOV_OlmedoVelar @ALarreaS7 Congratulations to you both! ❤️ can’t wait to meet and cuddle with my lab grandbaby 🍼🐣

Thrilled to introduce to the latest lab member, who just joined us in September. He’s currently mastering on milk biochemistry, motor-skill evolution, and testing the limits of parental energy reserves. @ALarreaS7 .

@Matt_Pinner Domenica

WHAT was your grandmother's name... I'm looking for a vintage girl's name. Not Doris.

@mbeisen @JetYojet This is really enough: What he did was unethical, by the standards of any era. The data W&C saw of hers clearly influenced their thinking, and gave them confidence in their model. Full stop. The rest is hand waving. Respectfully,

What he did was unethical, by the standards of any era. The data W&C saw of hers clearly influenced their thinking, and gave them confidence in their model. But she had not worked out the correct structure of DNA, and doesn't seem to haver been on the precipice either. While she might have ultimately worked it out directly from experimental data, as she wanted, I think it's likely that someone else would have deduced it earlier. It's not like this work was going on in secret - they were talking about it fairly openly and the basic outlines of their experimental findings were known. I'm in no way trying to defend Watson and Crick (and others) in this - their choice to downplay her role in the discovery warrants opprobrium. But the way this is often talked about is that she had - or was about to at least - solve the structure of DNA, and I don't think that's right, although of course, we can't really ever know.

The right way to remember Jim Watson is to remember him honestly. He was a central figure in one the 20th century's most impactful scientific discoveries, in the creation of modern molecular biology, in the beginning of the genomics era, and (less notably) to shaping the structures of contemporary academic departments and institutions. His actions with respect to Rosalind Franklin are certainly not beyond reproach, but the reduction of him in many peoples' minds to someone who stole her discovery is unfair and does little service to the truth. He could be charming and insightful in person, but also quick to demean people around him for seemingly no other reason than that he could. He spoke out frequently against unscientific thinking, yet also frequently said things that were unambiguously - and it often seemed intentionally - sexist, racist and anti-Semitic. The talk I saw him give at Berkeley 20 ish years ago, while perhaps designed primarily to provoke, was a masterclass in how to undermine your own reputation as a person and a thinkier. His demise was sad, but also self-inflicted in a way that someone as smart as he thought he was should have known to avoid. I know many won't mourn him - and that is fine - but I will because I think he and his generation of scientists made science a more interesting - if not always a better - place.

CSCU Assisted Pub: Grove-First: A Generalizable Framework to Evaluate Translational Solutions to Citrus Greening and Other Perennial Crop Diseases apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/10.1094/PD… Congratulations, @VectorBioSpace and all! @CornellCALS @CornellRsrch

I’m currently furloughed so was hesitant to share work achievements but sharing a friend’s X post can’t be considered work, right? Our Grove-First paper is out in Plant Disease! This paper highlights what’s possible when growers are partners in research & not just end users. Incredible teamwork made this happen & the project continues to support the citrus industry.