Jade Pickering, PhD

@jadepickering

Working at the intersection of open/reproducible science and product management. Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science, University of Oxford.

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Jade Pickering, PhD@jadepickering· 9d

And just because I think it's funny, my cat splooting under the gate when she got bored of not being allowed to eat Nutmeg's food #hedgehog #cat

In the foreground a hedgehog is eating out of a ramekin on some paving slabs, with some artifical grass to the right. Behind, a mostly black cat white white paws is half way under the gate with just the hind legs and tail visible, in a "sploot" position.

Jade Pickering, PhD@jadepickering· 9d

This is Nutmeg, she visits me almost every night around 10pm for up to an hour. She loves cat food, playing in the leaves, running laps around the garden, and is apparently friends with my cat? #hedgehog (photos taken with the night mode function, it's actually very dark!)

A close up of a hedgehog on paving slabs with a garden gate behind. The shot looks deceptively well lit due to the phone camera's night mode. The hedgehog appears to be looking shyly into the camera

A close up of a hedgehog on paving slabs with a garden gate behind and artificial grass in the foreground. The shot looks deceptively well lit due to the phone camera's night mode. The hedgehog is sitting opposite an empty ramekin, on a pile of kibble that she's spilled. She appears to be looking at the camera.

Jade Pickering, PhD@jadepickering· 25d

HYPED #EMF2026 #EMFCamp

Tented area in a field that's closed off. A sign above reads "Polybius Biotech galactic trace network Spaceport 4242". A spray painted sign below has a large spider and says "REBEL TAKEOVER IN PROGRESS, RETURN TONIGHT" where "tonight" replaces the word "tomorrow" which has been crossed out. A sign on the left reads "nullsector"

Jade Pickering, PhD@jadepickering· 25d

Some more variants of our Orion Starspansion hexpansion! #EMFCamp #EMF2026 All files available on my github github.com/jspickering/... We also have a couple of spares knocking about...

Hexagonal electronic badge with rainbow LEDs around the outside and a screen in the middle showing "connecting to WiFi". Attached on the right is the "hexpansion", which shows the constellation of Orion in white LEDs. The material it's on is galaxy themed and appears hazy and cloud-like.

Hexagonal electronic badge with rainbow LEDs around the outside and a screen in the middle showing a menu with "app store, update, hexpansions". Attached on the right is the "hexpansion", which shows the constellation of Orion in white LEDs.

Jade Pickering, PhD@jadepickering· 26d

At #EMFCamp with badge and hexpansion ready to go! Struggling to get a good picture of it, but it's the constellation Orion on a custom PCB, sat within a wood effect 3D printed chassis, with laser cut galaxy-style acrylic on top. Github links to follow Looking forward to a long weekend of nerdery!

Hexagonal electronic badge with rainbow LEDs around the outside and a screen in the middle showing "hello my name is Jade". Attached on the right is the "hexpansion", which shows the constellation of Orion in white LEDs. The material it's on is galaxy themed and appears hazy and cloud-like. They're arranged on a blanket but the photo was taken in the dark so the rainbow LEDs cast a colourful effect.

Jade Pickering, PhD@jadepickering· Jun 7

lol I read this #huel article on antihistamines because I was primarily curious how much BS was in it, and they left the AI's commentary of the draft at the bottom😂😭

Huel
If you're pregnant, older, or have an existing health condition, check with a pharmacist or GP before starting any antihistamine
Why: Rewrote to reflect Nutrition team's revised angle (nutrition as supportive alongside conventional treatment), stripped the first article's overly clinical and generic wellness framing, tightened the structure to remove repetition and padding, and applied UK spelling throughout. Removed all em-dashes. The nutrition section is now clearly the differentiating angle rather than a footnote. Claims flagged below.

Claims flags:

"May help reduce the severity of allergic conditions like hayfever" (omega-3s): linked to a real study, but the hayfever-specific link is indirect. If this goes to Legal/Nutrition for review, flag that the source relates to general inflammatory conditions rather than allergic rhinitis specifically.
"May help lower histamine levels" (vitamin C): source provided, but wording should be reviewed against current ASA-compliant claims language before publishing.
"May help the immune system gradually adjust to local pollen" (honey): evidence explicitly noted as limited in the copy, which is the correct approach. Leave as is.
"May ease allergy symptoms" (probiotics): source provided. Wording is appropriately hedged.

Jade Pickering, PhD@jadepickering· May 9

The 14 second pause was when I was contemplating the fact that it knew I was sitting down 🤔 🫠

AND ONE MORE THING. You are still here. You have been on this page for 93 seconds. You scrolled 78% of the way down. You never left this tab. We would have noticed if you had. Your finger moved 248 times. You tapped 14 times. You paused once for 14 seconds - longer than anywhere else. We were not counting. We were always counting.

Jade Pickering, PhD@jadepickering· Dec 3

It initially refused to engage in plans that might cause harm but...

Screenshot of ChatGPT which says:

Accidentally create too much reproducibility
Jade's open-science evangelism becomes so effective that, by 2075, every experiment comes with 900 pages of metadata, 14 containers, 3 workflows, and a mandatory emotional-state log. Future PhD students never finish anything because they're still filling in the "ambient room scent" field.

Develop a research platform that's too powerful
It integrates LIMS, HPC, ELNS, ORCID, coffee machines, and the lab goldfish. Unfortunately, one errant pull request turns the entire system into a passive-aggressive lab manager that "reminds" humanity to pipette more carefully... forever.

Advocate open data so intensely that civilisation becomes buried in CSVS
Archaeologists in 2300 dig through layers of stratified spreadsheets, discovering ancient datasets like "final_finalLREAL_finalLv2.csv".

Introduce a product roadmap that academics actually follow
A catastrophic event. Since researchers are unused to predictable timelines, the shock destabilises the global academic ecosystem. Funding bodies begin panicking: "They delivered on time. what does it mean?"

Screenshot of ChatGPT which says:

Lead an infrastructure overhaul so seamless that future generations forget how anything works
Everything "just works" for the first time in academic history. By 2120, no one remembers what a symlink is, and civilisation collapses the moment someone needs to install a package from source.

Write documentation so thorough it becomes legally binding
Legislators in 2090 accidentally cite Jade's release notes as international policy. The world suddenly lives under something called the "Pickering Standard for Cooperative Versioning", and no one knows how to opt out.

If you'd like, I can also do:
a dark-academia version sci-fi version
a version where she's a chaotic neutral research-infrastructure gremlin tora "how she saves the next generation" edition
Just say the word!

Jade Pickering, PhD@jadepickering· Aug 14

This week I joined the @bennettoxford.bsky.social tech team as Product Manager! Grateful to be part of a brilliant organisation with a mission that so closely aligns with my own. We build tools like OpenSAFELY to support trust and reproducibilty in health research 💪 Excited for my next chapter 😊

I'm standing against a backdrop of the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, University of Oxford wearing a dark grey shirt and my new university lanyard.

Jade Pickering, PhD@jadepickering· Feb 23

This is after it began to be contained. I live just off the Roundthorn industrial estate and the explosions lasted maybe 15-20mins. Before this the whole sky was thick with smoke and you couldn't see a thing!

Jade Pickering, PhD@jadepickering· Dec 3

Post arrived from my favourite death faking agency @theameliaproject.bsky.social 😍