Jane Coffin Childs Fellow & postdoc in immunology @ Stanford Robinson lab | 2024 Harvard neuro PhD @LehtinenLab • @HHMINews Gilliam ‘21 • 58/100📚 in 2026
Joined June 2018
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11 Sep 2024
🧬 With biomedical PhD applications open now, I often get asked for advice. I created a guide filled with tips from my own journey to Harvard & insights from others. I use it to lead workshops & it’s ready to help you too! ✨
Dive in and share! ⬇️
yaelcourtney.com/phdapplicat…
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For those in the PAIS/Long COVID community, I urge you to consider signing a petition for Wired to retract the recent problematic article re: "brain retraining" as a suppressed cure & ignoring MASSIVE bodies of credible research. I signed and commented.
c.org/C8dz8kMZNW
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Ya'el Courtney, PhD retweeted
📣New @BMJMentalHealth study finds that adults with acute infections may face a higher risk of severe mental illness later on. Risks were highest after sepsis & meningitis, highlighting the importance of infection prevention & follow-up care. #PublicHealth mentalhealth.bmj.com/content…
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New OMB rule would move science funding from experts to political appointees, and let agencies cancel grants mid-project.
Wrote up the plain version how to comment before July 13.
open.substack.com/pub/letthe…
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Ya'el Courtney, PhD retweeted
Just updated my HHMI Gilliam Fellowship application guide for the 2026 competition, which brings major program changes.
Int'l PhD students can now apply. MD-PhDs are eligible. & a new postdoc pathway that can extend HHMI support up to 7 years total.
yaelcourtney.com/resources-a…
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Ya'el Courtney, PhD retweeted
COVID raises your shingles risk.
New data from 110,000 patients out of Taiwan shows that post-COVID Shingles also raise risk of
➡️ Bell's palsy
➡️ Guillain Barré
➡️ Myasthenia Gravis
Worst of all? Neurological vulnerability lasts for at least 3 years. buff.ly/H1N73zd
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Gave a @pintofscienceUS talk in Palo Alto last night: “You Got Over Mono. Your Body Didn’t.”
15 min on EBV. 95% of us carry it for life. Major cancer cause, required trigger for MS, increasingly implicated across autoimmune and post-viral disease.🦠
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In my opinion, equating balance with mediocrity is a false dichotomy. If you need to sacrifice work-life balance to feel productive, you haven't identified your highest-leverage experiments. Grinding lets you avoid the harder cognitive work of figuring out what actually matters.
May 12
I don’t agree. A PhD student should not prioritize work-life balance.
Getting to do a PhD is a privilege. You are paid to think. There is no pressure for you to be economically useful. It is a unique opportunity to push the boundaries of human knowledge and produce something ground breaking.
And nothing great ever happens without complete devotion. Look at everything that moved and shaped the world. Every single person who created anything meaningful, in science, in arts, in music, in movies, devoted their lives to their craft.
Extraordinary outcomes require extraordinary inputs and some degree of sacrifice. Sure, have work-life balance during your PhD. But be content a mediocre outcome.
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First postdoc first author manuscript submitted!!!! (And being sent for review phew)
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Ya'el Courtney, PhD retweeted
May 12
Can we rebuild the immune system in the lab to understand disease?🧬 Pint of Science brings lab-grown mini organs revealing how immunity drives disease, from hidden viruses to chronic inflammation. A non-profit festival bringing science to cafés and bars! #pint26
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Ya'el Courtney, PhD retweeted
May 9
It’s estimated that the Protein Data Bank (PDB) cost around $13B to create. Alphafold was only possible because of it. If we want ML to solve biology, we should be funding the creation of databases and the development of new assay technologies. ML is nothing without data.
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Ya'el Courtney, PhD retweeted
Apr 22
The most promising longevity drug isn't a peptide or metformin. It's the Shingles vaccine.
New data shows it slows biological aging and lowers systemic inflammation for 4 years post-shot. We are seeing a 20% reduction in new dementia diagnoses and a 25% lower risk of stroke.
Stop waiting for a magic pill. One is already on the shelf.
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Ya'el Courtney, PhD retweeted
📢🎉@hhmi_science competition for the next cohorts of #HannaGray Fellows and #FreemanHrabowski Scholars opening 11/3/2026. Senior postdocs and faculty within 7 years of appointment. Up to $10M over 10 yrs, salary & benefits. Spread the word and consider applying! bit.ly/4vhC0LA
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Researchers from Stanford, UCSF, Berkeley (and more!!!) are heading to Sacramento on May 4 to rally for California's science funding future. Free bus. Open to community members too. If you care about publicly funded research, this is the moment to show up. 🚌🔬
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Ya'el Courtney, PhD retweeted
Apr 14
My TEDxMIT talk on The Dominoes of Chronic Illness: Reframing a Medical Mystery won't be on Youtube for another few weeks, so I've tried to capture the essence here in a 29 part thread.
Apr 14
I want to ask you to follow this dot with your eyes. Was that easy? Without you even having to give that much thought, your brain is telling your eye muscles where to move to keep your focus on that dot. 1/
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Ya'el Courtney, PhD retweeted
Apr 14
I want to ask you to follow this dot with your eyes. Was that easy? Without you even having to give that much thought, your brain is telling your eye muscles where to move to keep your focus on that dot. 1/
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Just updated my HHMI Gilliam Fellowship application guide for the 2026 competition, which brings major program changes.
Int'l PhD students can now apply. MD-PhDs are eligible. & a new postdoc pathway that can extend HHMI support up to 7 years total.
yaelcourtney.com/resources-a…
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The guide also links to my complete 2021 application materials, fully annotated. Career Statement, Scientific Leadership, Research Plan.
When I applied in 2020, I couldn't find a single full example of a winning application anywhere public. So I put mine out there.
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If you're a 2nd or 3rd year PhD student in the biomedical sciences thinking about applying, the application launches September 1, 2026. That gives you time to start now, talk to your advisor, and actually build something strong.
I offer coaching if you want help.
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