Ben Kamens
@kamens
Followers
6,206
Following
1,810
Media
141
Statuses
6,224
Giving scientists AI superpowers @springdiscovery . Origins: @khanacademy & Fog Creek.
Joined December 2008
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
#خلصوا_صفقات_الهلال1
• 1032757 Tweets
ラピュタ
• 407072 Tweets
Atatürk
• 402563 Tweets
Megan
• 239814 Tweets
Johnny
• 237141 Tweets
نابولي
• 198560 Tweets
#4MINUTES_EP6
• 147191 Tweets
RM IS COMING
• 134533 Tweets
namjoon
• 126560 Tweets
olivia
• 121447 Tweets
Napoli
• 104591 Tweets
Sterling
• 96798 Tweets
Coco
• 55238 Tweets
Labor Day
• 53972 Tweets
كاس العالم
• 50869 Tweets
Arteta
• 37613 Tweets
Nelson
• 31606 Tweets
Javier Acosta
• 26543 Tweets
ŹOOĻ記念日
• 25012 Tweets
Día Internacional
• 23875 Tweets
Romney
• 19138 Tweets
Tadic
• 16756 Tweets
Lolla
• 15982 Tweets
Dzeko
• 15098 Tweets
#FBvALY
• 13983 Tweets
Lo Celso
• 12627 Tweets
نادي سعودي
• 11845 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
Play w/ tech we've been building for years
@SpringDiscovery
.
Scientists working on the world's hardest problems deserve the world's best tools.
Scientists are too often forced to tackle next-generation problems with last generation’s tools.
We built MegaMap to give scientists the superpowers that lay at the intersection of human intuition and machine learning.
Play w/ it:
0
6
38
4
14
51
Price of insulin sold by two different companies. Companies that theoretically compete. There are two lines here.
60
2K
1K
Replace “car” w/ “glucose” and the variables w/ “insulin taken, food gobbled, exercise, recent insulin sensitivity, absorption curves, …” and you have the open source automated pancreas app I use:
It’s life-changing. Humans need help w/ complex systems.
Something I wish existed: a mobile app that dynamically calculates the probability you're about to crash your car, based on your speed, the history of the piece of road you're on, the weather, the time of day, accelerometer data, etc.
247
186
2K
4
24
162
Always make sure your developers have the very best tools available
http://t.co/i1WsBmKT1T
6
240
154
Hacker News comments: where everyone agrees you should just get out there and build something, but also your idea is stupid you idiot
5
93
145
The first of many milestones we'll be sharing over the coming months.
Spring's Series B, led by
@generalcatalyst
and
@eladgil
, w/ strong support from existing investors + many new.
Plus some incredible new execs steering us into the clinic and multiple BD deals.
We raised $32M and bolstered our exec team so we can put world-leading technology in the hands of scientists developing therapies for aging.
7
11
60
22
12
142
I get to work every day w/ a team of experts that teach me constantly. On an insanely hard problem w/ the potential to dramatically REDUCE DISEASE. Supported by a rare group of visionary funders.
Spring is building something special. Join us!
4
13
125
Today's my last day at Khan Academy. Couldn't be more thankful or feel luckier for the past 6 years:
20
15
119
0/ The search for COVID-19 therapies should revolve around a single question that’s staring us right in the face, and we’re mostly ignoring it:
5
27
101
The most mature and accomplished devs I’ve worked with are also those who most frequently say “I don’t understand”
http://t.co/og3yYryR
8
292
98
Trello's support for extremely varied screen sizes is the most seamless I've ever seen.
@bobbygrace
on how it's done:
http://t.co/N0NdUrOL
1
25
98
1/ Proud to announce our team, funding, and ambitious mission
@SpringDiscovery
— we're fighting back against the diseases of old age by accelerating the discovery of anti-aging therapies:
(paywall)
8
11
98
This is a pic of open source code likely adding years to my life.
Indebted to those that built OpenAPS and Loop, my artificial pancreas.
5
22
96
How good we have it when we are healthy.
I’ve always felt lucky that type 1 diabetes has kept me aware of mortality. Appreciative of time.
I hope a deep, calm swell of appreciation fills our chests for a long time when we make it through this difficult moment together.
1
4
74
We’ve spent years quietly building a discovery engine
@springdiscovery
that gives scientists fighting aging the tools they deserve.
Feels good to be sharing more of our tech publicly —
3
12
67
The absolute minimum every Khan Academy developer absolutely, positively must know about mentoring interns
http://t.co/1dT48D8Pgb
1
30
64
Absolutely gorgeous CSS3 sticky notes by
@rsobers
:
http://www.accidentalhacker.com/sticky-notes-with-css3/
0
26
62
Kind of an honor to be racing the best financed startup in history
2
0
59
3-year old just sent me on a frantic password cycling freakout.
Was sure I was hacked when I saw this.
Turns out she switched from Khan Academy Kids to Twitter on my iPad, then dropped a ridiculously appropriate tweet
3
0
56
My newest artificial pancreas.
Middle thingie lets phone control pump.
👏👏
@bewestisdoing
@loudnate
@ps2
many more.
5
11
56
I couldn't handle my jealousy over Stack Overflow's profiler any longer. We released a kindred spirit for App Engine:
http://t.co/ze6US49
4
21
51
64% of first gen students at top universities say Khan Academy was meaningful part of their education. Solid metric.
2
20
49
And more news on the way...
Spring Discovery secures exclusive license to IP from Boston Children's Hospital related to small molecule inhibitors of highly inflammatory programmed cell death processes
0
3
17
6
7
50
Trying to decide if it’s worth it for
@springdiscovery
to be the flag-bearer fighting for acceptance of emojis in drug codenames.
Pharma world expects “SPR-1032” but how cute is “SPR-🐙🐵”
5
0
47
A good manager with too much on their plate is indistinguishable from a bad manager.
3
35
45
Scientists should step into the lab and feel like batman walking into the bat cave. Surrounded by the best R&D tools at the ready.
Spring gives scientists superpowers.
4
6
46
We just shared Khan Academy's engineering principles — you're welcome to steal, copy, berate, whatever:
1
11
43
Interesting article about a teacher failing and eventually successfully using Khan Academy. Honest, useful feedback.
http://t.co/w5gjGLPtrH
1
21
38
@JamesPeyer
@altos_labs
I think this is the “indications in the streets, longevity in the sheets” comms strategy
1
2
39
I strongly agree but it is a *little* surreal when you’re dosing insulin and iOS suggests you just end it all
6
0
35
@mattkrisiloff
Spring speeds up the search for therapies for aging and its diseases.
A team of machine learning and biology folks, together building better tools and advancing drugs.
Hiring immunologists, cell biologists, high throughput pros, lab manager, ...
0
6
35
We celebrated female interns, got frustrating responses. Meritocracy and discrimination in tech:
http://t.co/VNGpRbdK
8
97
35
Not often that an open source project significantly changes one's health and personal life...
...this artificial pancreas certainly did. 👏
I just released Loop and LoopKit version 1.0. Thank you to everybody that's made this possible.
7
30
92
0
16
35
Excited to be a part (and meet some great folks working on the most important problem in health)
Announcing: On Deck Longevity Biotech (ODLB) 🧬
Decades of research have shown that aging is a malleable and reversible process. The constraint for progress has been a lack of founders.
Today we’re helping builders navigate this dynamic vertical.
7
79
397
1
2
34
Very excited to be working w/ Harry Kleanthous's expert team in this space.
Vaccines are one of our most powerful weapons against disease, and systematically understanding how to improve immune response is a huge challenge tightly related to loss of immune function as we age.
Today we announced a collaboration w/ Gates Foundation to discover and characterize novel vaccine adjuvants using Spring's ML-powered engine.
We're excited to deploy Spring's tech to systematize our understanding of adjuvants and immune response.
More:
1
5
17
1
3
33
“if I had to pick just one factor that I think is holding biology back, I would say ‘long feedback loops’”
Many ask why medicine is not progressing faster. I go through biology history, argue against the talent/not enough math theory, conclude it's a lot due to slow feedback loops & why we need to make clinical trials faster.
Excerpts:
"A version of the
34
122
682
0
2
32
Nobody at your techbio company surprised you w/ a wordle clone for guessing secret drug IDs?
sad
1
3
32
25% of Khan Academy visitors currently learning how to code their own e-holiday card for
#HourOfCode
:
0
34
29
.
@natatouille
@khanacademy
and
@eli_awry
made what is inarguably the greatest
@slackhq
bot of all time
1
12
32
This is unlocked thanks to years of hacking by a community of persons/parents w/ T1D.
Deep respect for
#OpenAPS
/
#wearenotwaiting
crowds.
0
3
31
“I’m a true believer that people, they don’t really know their limits,” Mr. Bourla said in an interview. “And usually, they have the tendency to underestimate what they can produce.”
2
2
31
Freaking cool prototype of Khan Academy exercises integrated w/
@twilio
's txt msg API by
@30streetstudio
http://t.co/22ArebUh
9
70
30
hearing R&D scientists’ reaction to our tech is intoxicating
one of our senior scientists:
1
1
30
Many of my values and most of my luck can be traced back to working
@FogCreek
in early days.
Feel responsible to deliver on all I was given. Grateful to be among this crew:
0
0
31
Khan Academy associated w/ 2x typical point gain b/w PSAT and SAT — across gender, race, and socioeconomic groups. And it's free forever.
New research shows 20 hours on Khan Academy’s Official SAT Practice is associated with an average 115-point score increase.
10
256
372
0
10
29
More excited about this than the watch — KA on demo iPads in Apple Store. Fun moment for team
http://t.co/DxZV2lZEZu
0
4
30
So true. Spend so much time on this when giving offers. Shocked at how mistreated many scientists are w/r/t classic bio equity, and the lack of information given to them to even realize it
Boston biotech employees need more education around what equity is and how to value it. The historical lack of founder-executives has led to a complete disregard for cap table discipline, and as such, scientists devalue the upside of the equity.
Founder-led startups can fix this
14
12
188
0
0
30
“Should we fight back against aging?”
Firmly believe people’s moral intuition about this question would align *instantly* if a therapy existed today that helped people live healthily to 150.
Maybe
@celinehalioua
and
@loyalfordogs
can quickly disabuse us of this annoying debate
@waitbutwhy
The precision of our biological clock across trillions of cells is incredible. One never sees someone with an old left arm, but a young right arm.
Aging can obviously be fixed. The real question is whether it should be.
5K
2K
25K
3
0
29
Well-written post by
@df07
on why Stack Overflow works hard to support remote workers:
http://t.co/17OXhZVX
0
33
29
½ of SAT examinees prepped w/ Khan Academy. 98% found it useful. 19% drop in # of students that paid for test prep.
1
11
28
“If our bodies were commercial aircraft, this would be akin to skipping maintenance and waiting until the engine is on fire at 35,000 feet before you take action.”
2
2
29
Absolutely amazed by
@jeresig
@jlfwong
and Jessica Liu's contribution to CS education
http://t.co/UPcUOU4f.
I made this
http://t.co/Qs7TOP3u
2
22
28
A lot of people hear this and think, "…terrifying!". Only somebody living w/ type 1 diabetes knows how terrifying it is to _not_ have this.
1
11
27
A big deal. I so wish I had this for my AP's.
Khan Academy is now the official practice partner for AP! Check out our AP lessons, all 100% FREE.
31
537
659
0
7
28
One of my fav early
@khanacademy
memories is when the mountain view cop pulled over to see if
@jasonrr
& I were ok during a product argument
0
2
27
“People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell.”
Too many great quotes to choose from:
4
3
26
I said all sorts of stupid sh*t, be sure to tune in
Just wrapped a delightful and info-packed interview with founder/CEO
@kamens
of
@SpringDiscovery
. Episode will drop next Wednesday (10/27)!
0
2
10
3
2
27
Just-launched Khan Academy iPad app is
#1
in App Store for free education
http://t.co/YYxWrPUr
7
96
25
Beautiful ending to a big week thanks to
@SpringDiscovery
crew — taking the wraps off our new digs
1
1
26
@generalcatalyst
@eladgil
We're both building cutting-edge tech to help scientists discover/develop therapies for diseases of aging while advancing a pipeline of drugs.
I can think of no more impactful way to fight disease.
Deeply thankful of the supporters who let us tackle such an ambitious mission.
2
0
26
8/ Our team + our tools form a machine that shows promise for profiling the aging immune system and screening compounds to rejuvenate it.
Dive into today’s preprint or read on.
We screened thousands of drugs...
3
6
25
When we started
@springdiscovery
, I thought my work (aging) and my disease (type 1 diabetes) were completely different beasts.
3 years later I’m nearly convinced that many of T1D’s consequences mirror accelerated aging.
nearly every time I dive into a new longevity pathway, the underlying mechanism of action ends up being improved metabolic fitness
7
9
101
1
0
25
Nonstop stories of people using Khan Academy uniquely. Incredible variety of learners. 2 new favs:
http://t.co/RqaNLzWR
http://t.co/46XGOcXC
2
48
25
Just tried again and my team keeps thwarting me
Trying to decide if it’s worth it for
@springdiscovery
to be the flag-bearer fighting for acceptance of emojis in drug codenames.
Pharma world expects “SPR-1032” but how cute is “SPR-🐙🐵”
5
0
47
4
0
25
One Khan student's disbelief about Monty Hall problem answered by another's simulation in our compsci framework:
http://t.co/luu2GMKR
0
11
25
Lacking Teachers and Textbooks, (some of) India’s Schools Turn to Khan Academy to Survive
http://t.co/ZkfNuMNt
1
58
25
There was a time in my life when I would’ve believed this was an exaggeration
2
0
24
Yes. Plz Bezos do ittttttt
Could be real chance for some drug prices to break free of insurance<=>PBM<=>pharma quagmire.
Scoop: Amazon is hiring a team to break into the pharmacy market
15
106
116
1
2
24
I don't like disease. I don't like anybody suffering from disease.
It's unsettling to me how cavalier people can be, mocking someone getting ill. It's unsettling that many will read this as political in some way and tell me why, in this case, it's good.
1
1
24
@sehurlburt
@rbhar90
Amen. We always branded ours as "healthy hackathons" -- required people to leave&sleep, brought in healthy food
1
1
21
During big migration, deployed a late night "Back soon!" homepage to Khan…as a response that got cached all over web w/ 365-day expiration.
My code once took down a client’s Intranet mid-demo. Tell us your coding screw-ups, so we can show new coders
#weallmakemistakes
🤦
301
291
630
0
0
22
@hunterwalk
any time he treated a patient so down on their luck they didn’t have adequate shoes, he’d give them the shoes off his feet
1
1
22
Somebody else's code is predicting where my glucose is heading (oversimplification) and telling my insulin pump how to adjust accordingly.
2
4
22
A while back
@andy_matuschak
told me that most disagreements boil down to two parties having different Buxton indexes.
“...close co-operation b/w entities w/ very different Buxton Indices invariably fails and leads to moral complaints about the partner.”
@KarlPfleger
@DunhamLab
@MaxUnfried
@DrMorganLevine
@realNathanCheng
@johnharris1969
I have real concerns around the deception and misleading timeframes about what is feasible/likely/possible (within reasonable probability) in humans. Almost uniformly, the actual experts who know the biology are telling you the same thing
1
0
3
1
3
21
see
.
@khanacademy
is the best way to learn online. Help them continue to provide free, world-class educational resources
94
1K
3K
0
3
21
has anyone ever been subtweeted this hard
@kendraffe
Get a doula to advocate for you in the delivery room. Your loved ones, while well-meaning, likely won’t know what to ask for/what you might need.
1
0
12
1
0
21
Fun w/ all-hands "onsites" while
@SpringDiscovery
is remote.
Pluto (
@eladgil
's project) gives events like trivia night a quirky feel — teams can split up to different areas to talk privately. Host can present on a screen or walk around and taunt the groups😂. A blast.
0
1
21