99. Laura Luebbert: gget, hunting viruses, and questionable honeybee dances

Laura Luebbert just finished her PhD in computational biology and will soon be a postdoc with Pardis Sabeti, to hunt some viruses. We talk about how she got into biology, how she created a widely-used software project (gget) with no prior coding experience, her recent reports when she discovered questionable data in key papers about honeybee dances, and much more.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.

Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon

Timestamps
0:00:00: Why Laura studied biology in Leiden/the Netherlands (and the importance of early scientific training)
0:13:41: How Laura ended up doing a PhD at Caltech with Lior Pachter (and how to choose one project if you're interested in many things)
0:22:00: gget: Developing and maintaining a software tool with no prior programming experience
0:54:07: Laura's future postdoc (with Pardis Sabeti): global virus-hunter
0:59:34: Finding and reporting questionable data in published papers about honeybee dances
1:36:43: A book or paper more people should read
1:38:55: Something Laura wishes she'd learnt sooner
1:40:38: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
1:44:02: Bonus: should I learn Catalan?

Podcast links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-pod-twt

Laura's links

• Website: https://geni.us/luebbert-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/luebbert-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/luebbert-twt

Ben's links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-twt

References and links

Episode with Jessica Polka: https://geni.us/bjks-polka
Episode with Elisabeth Bik: https://geni.us/bjks-bik
Episode with Joe Hilgard: https://geni.us/bjks-hilgard

Prototype fund Germany: https://prototypefund.de/en/
PubPeer: https://pubpeer.com/

Aaronovitch (2014-). Rivers of London series.
Frisch (1927). Aus dem Leben der Bienen.
Luebbert, Sullivan, Carilli, Hjörleifsson, Winnett, Chari & Pachter (2023). Efficient and accurate detection of viral sequences at single-cell resolution reveals putative novel viruses perturbing host gene expression. bioRxiv.
Luebbert & Pachter (2023). Efficient querying of genomic reference databases with gget. Bioinformatics.
Luebbert & Pachter (2024). The miscalibration of the honeybee odometer. arXiv.
https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/the-journal-of-scientific-integrity/