Genomic epidemiologist at the Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance in Oxford. How can microbial genomics improve health in high infectious disease settings?

Joined May 2010
442 Photos and videos
Phil Ashton retweeted
Opus 4.8 is insane, nothing will be the same after this model 💀
803
1,038
17,282
1,465,544
Phil Ashton retweeted
The world map, but it’s all Africa
130
1,173
37,453
407,790
Phil Ashton retweeted
Imperdible mensaje de Chistina Koch tras su vuelta del espacio. Oratoria 10/10. Contenido 10/10. Emoción 10/10. Gente que sí ♥️
161
3,675
18,800
725,329
Oh hi FungiDB
Everyone has one email that they receive daily, can't unsubscribe to, and are gradually driven insane by
1
143
It's also a reservoir for AMR determinants that could transfer to dominant invasive Salmonella lineages like Typhimurium. ⚠️
1
38
South Africa's surveillance infrastructure caught this. Malawi's didn't exist to. This gap is not just a technical problem, it's a global equity problem. We cannot fight AMR without investing in surveillance capacity in low-resource settings.
1
34
Phil Ashton retweeted
It was a wonderful honour to be awarded an honorary doctorate by my alma mater today - all the more so because my fellow honorands were such lovely and brilliant people. Thank you @UniofOxford and @WilliamJHague. It was an unforgettable day. ox.ac.uk/news/2026-02-24-cha…
90
41
1,732
310,686
📣New pre-print alert! 🦠We sequenced S. Typhi from a vaccine trial in Malawi🇲🇼 📊No genomic differences between vaccine and control arms, but short follow-up. 💡That’s why ongoing genomic surveillance after vaccination is essential to detect escape. medrxiv.org/content/10.64898…
43
Phil Ashton retweeted
Alison Gopnik's insight: babies learn like scientists. Tyler's question: are scientists actually good learners? New episode on childhood cognition, the ‘intuitive apprenticeship’ model of teaching older kids, AI as a cultural technology, and why she thinks nature vs. nurture is a misleading framework. Timestamps: 0:00:00 - How children—and scientists—learn 0:14:35 - Consciousness, episodic memories, and aphantasia 0:23:06 - Freud’s and Piaget’s theories about childhood 0:27:49 - Twin studies and nature vs. nurture 0:39:33 - Teaching strategies for younger vs. older children 0:44:07 - AI's ability to generate novel insights 0:53:57 - What Autism and ADHD diagnoses do and don’t reveal 0:58:02 - The success of the Gopnik siblings
3
3
12
8,597
Was there any need to underline the word Nature in the text body?
In 1992 Peter Ratcliffe received this rejection letter from Nature. His findings were not "a sufficient advance in our understanding". 27 years later he won the Nobel Prize for the same discovery. Don't lose faith in the things you believe in.
100
I thought my son said his bum was hurting so I got him to bend over and I put some cream on it, turns out he said his thumb hurt 😭
86
Did you know, there's NO evidence that autism is increasing in prevalence! High quality community based studies, and age based prevalence both support this. I was very surprised when I learnt about that. nature.com/articles/s41572-0…

57
Phil Ashton retweeted
1
6
14
3,397
Phil Ashton retweeted
25 Jun 2025
2 - Adam Lallana is one of only two players to make an England appearance whose surname contains two letters that appear three times (L & A), along with Steve McManaman (M & A). Alphabet.
39
68
962
79,300
Phil Ashton retweeted
14 Jun 2025
👀Using an autonomous agent based on o3-mini and GPT-4.1, a team from Harvard, MIT & other institutions reproduced and updated an entire issue of Cochrane Reviews in two days… saving 12 person-years of work! The AI reviews captured more papers & were more accurate than humans.
41
346
2,059
267,804