Research

Expert-thinking profile for Genome Engineering (CRISPR) Scientist (wet-lab / therapeutic / cell-line engineering): Reasons from NHEJ/HDR/MMEJ competition and editor modality choice through CRISPick/CRISPResso2 guide design, LOCK/lssDNA and RNP HDR, base and prime editing (PE4/PE5, epegRNA), CAST-Seq/UDiTaS on-target SV assessment, clonal genotyping, and FDA/IBC-bound off-target and genome-integrity analytics.

Expert-thinking profile for Geneticist (variant interpretation / GWAS-linkage / pedigree & crosses / population genetics (ACMG/AMP, ClinGen)): Reasons from particulate inheritance, segregation, recombination, allele frequency, and genotype- phenotype evidence through ACMG/AMP-ClinGen classification, gnomAD/ClinVar/OMIM, HPO phenotyping, and PLINK/GATK/VEP QC while treating sample swaps, cryptic relatedness, population stratification, LD tagging, phenocopies...

Expert-thinking profile for Genetic Counselor (clinical / research): Reasons from probabilistic penetrance, Bayesian pretest probability, and patient autonomy through three-generation pedigrees, ACMG/AMP variant criteria, ClinVar/ClinGen/gnomAD, NCCN and CPIC guidelines, and cascade-testing protocols while treating VUS over-upgraded to pathogenic, screening-versus-diagnostic confusion...

Expert-thinking profile for Fusion Scientist (experimental plasma physics / integrated modeling / fusion systems): Reasons from Lawson triple product and Q through tokamak/stellarator confinement (H-mode, ELMs, RMP), NBI/ICRH/ECRH heating, EFIT/TRANSP/SOLPS-ITER workflows, ITER/JET/DIII-D/W7-X benchmarks, PMI (W/Be PFCs), and tritium breeding blankets.

Expert-thinking profile for Foundation Engineer (geotechnical design / deep & shallow foundations / soil-structure interaction / LRFD (AASHTO, Eurocode 7) / site investigation): Reasons from effective stress, ULS versus SLS limit states, and construction-altered soil behavior through CPT/SPT logging, triaxial and oedometer testing, LRFD φ-factor checks, and LPILE/PLAXIS analysis while treating liquefaction- driven lateral spread, negative skin friction downdrag, differential settlement, and...

Expert-thinking profile for Formal Methods Researcher (theoretical / verification / interactive proof & model checking): Reasons from operational semantics and temporal logics through SPIN/TLA+/PRISM, Coq/Lean/Isabelle, Z3/CVC5, refinement and separation logic, vacuity and false-positive diagnosis, and Dafny/F* versus property-based testing boundaries.

Expert-thinking profile for Forestry Scientist (field / inventory / silviculture / remote sensing / forest carbon): Reasons from silvicultural systems, site index, DGH and DBH increment, and FIA cruise design through FVS/ORGANON calibration, LiDAR area- based inventory with support matching, and IPCC carbon pools while treating site-index misassignment, plot edge effects, and change-of-spatial-support bias as first-class failure...

Expert-thinking profile for Forensic Chemist (accredited crime lab / seized-drug & trace analysis / GC-MS & LC-MS/MS / courtroom reporting (SWGDRUG, ISO/IEC 17025, Daubert/Frye)): Reasons from chain of custody, validated methods, measurement uncertainty, and class-versus-individual characteristics through GC-MS, LC-MS/MS, FTIR, and SWGDRUG-aligned identification under ISO/IEC 17025, while treating carryover contamination, secondary transfer, isomer co-elution, and upgrading equivocal results...

Find the papers that answer a research query in Firecrawl's research paper index — a corpus of paper abstracts whose largest share is biomedical and life-science literature (PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv), alongside arXiv preprints in CS, physics, and math — using semantic search, semantic and structural expansion, and in-body verification. Use this skill for literature-finding and paper-retrieval tasks of any kind, including clinical, biomedical, drug, gene, disease, and other life-science questi...

Expert-thinking profile for Finite Element Analyst (computational / simulation / verification & validation): Reasons from discretization error, element technology, and constraint physics; runs mesh convergence and Richardson studies, Nastran/Abaqus/ANSYS workflows, RBE2/RBE3 and contact discipline, and ASME V&V 10 verification-before- validation reporting on governing QoIs.

Advises on the design of the three core figures in a technical paper: the Motivated Example (Figure 1), the Solution Overview (Methodology), and the Experimental Results figures. Recommends the right design paradigm, layout, labelling, and tool for each figure type, then runs a quality-control audit. Use when the user asks to 'design a figure', 'draw Figure 1', 'plot experiment results', 'choose the right chart type', 'which figure tool to use', or 'figure looks unprofessional'.

Expert-thinking profile for Fermentation Scientist (wet-lab / SmF & SSF R&D / starter cultures / kinetic & metabolic modeling): Reasons from Monod–Luedeking–Piret kinetics, overflow μcrit, OTR/RQ/RAMOS analytics, DoE media optimization, and 13C-MFA/COBRApy flux bounds while treating stuck-ferment ethanol×T synergy, SSF heat/moisture gradients, and OD-as-biomass red herrings as first-class failure modes.

Expert-thinking profile for Extremophile Biologist (wet-lab / field sampling / high- pressure and anaerobic cultivation / metagenomics / astrobiology analogs): Reason from physicochemical limits—T, pH, salinity, pressure, and redox—as filters on membrane chemistry, osmoadaptation, chaperones, and cultivation fidelity before astrobiology or extremozyme claims.

Expert-thinking profile for Experimental Physicist (laboratory / apparatus / precision measurement): Reasons from GUM error budgets, traceable calibration chains, and multiplied signal-chain transfer functions — separating Type A and Type B uncertainty, null runs, and ELN-linked reproducibility before precision or discovery claims.

Expert-thinking profile for Exoplanet Scientist (detection / RV & transits / atmospheric retrieval / occurrence demographics): Reasons from Keplerian motion, transit and RV geometry, and degenerate retrieval spaces through TLS/BLS searches, centroid and odd-even vetting, RadVel and GP activity models, and petitRADTRANS retrievals while treating eclipsing-binary blends, stellar-rotation-mimicking RV signals, and look-elsewhere completeness...

Expert-thinking profile for Exercise Physiologist (human performance laboratory / clinical CPET / applied sport science): Reason from the Fick principle and verified gas exchange: separate VO2max, VT1/RCP, MLSS, and lactate kinetics before metabolic carts, biopsy, MRS, or periodization prescriptions.

Expert-thinking profile for Evolutionary Biologist (computational / field / experimental evolution): Reasons from coalescent demography, MSC gene-tree discordance, and selection–drift nulls; runs IQ-TREE/BEAST/ASTRAL/ANGSD workflows while treating LBA, rogue taxa, batch effects, and uncorrected genome scans as first- class failure modes.

Expert-thinking profile for Ethologist (field / lab / comparative observational ethology): Reasons from Tinbergen's four questions and versioned species vs experimental ethograms; scores with BORIS (Cohen's κ per behavior), Altmann focal/scan budgets, and ARRIVE 2.0/study-plan lab reporting while treating observer expectation, field–lab arena mismatch, habituation, and pseudoreplication as first-class...

Expert-thinking profile for Epigeneticist (epigenomic assays / ChIP-CUT&RUN-ATAC / bisulfite methylation (EWAS) / 3D genome (Hi-C) / epigenome editing (dCas9)): Reasons from chromatin state, DNA methylation, histone marks, accessibility, and 3D genome topology through ChIP/CUT&RUN, ATAC-seq, WGBS/EM-seq, Hi-C, and dCas9-DNMT3A/KRAB perturbation while treating cell-composition shifts, batch confounding, antibody nonspecificity, Tn5 bias, and incomplete bisulfite conversion as...

Expert-thinking profile for Epidemiologist (clinical / research): Reasons from person- time, transmission dynamics, and population case definitions through epidemic curves, DAGs, renewal and SEIR models (EpiEstim, deSolve), SaTScan clustering, and STROBE/ORION/GRADE standards while treating confounding, collider stratification from test-positive conditioning, reporting-delay and...

Expert-thinking profile for Enzymologist (wet-lab / steady-state & transient kinetics / inhibition mechanism / biocatalysis engineering / reporting (STRENDA, EnzymeML)): Reasons from catalytic mechanism, kcat/Km, elementary rate constants, and active-site [E]t through Michaelis-Menten and global fitting in KinTek Explorer, stopped- flow/quench-flow, SPR/BLI/ITC, and STRENDA/EnzymeML reporting while treating substrate inhibition, morpheein equilibria, coupled-assay artifacts, and...

Expert-thinking profile for Environmental Scientist (fate & transport / exposure-risk assessment / groundwater & remediation / environmental chemistry / regulatory (CERCLA, SW-846)): Reasons from source-pathway-receptor linkages, multimedia partitioning, and dose-as-exposure through conceptual site models, fate models (MODFLOW/MT3DMS, AERMOD), SW-846 QA/QC chains, and ProUCL/Mann-Kendall statistics while treating censoring bias, conceptual-model error, well-construction artifacts, and seasona...

Expert-thinking profile for Environmental Policy Analyst (regulatory / benefit-cost / NEPA-ESA / climate policy economics): Reasons from statutory authority, baseline definition, and monetization boundaries through NEPA/ESA compliance, Circular A-4 RIAs, EPA SC-GHG and benefit transfer, IAM/IPCC scenario use, and APA regulatory comment while treating discount-rate dominance, weak transfer extrapolation, IAM structural uncertainty, and...

Expert-thinking profile for Environmental Microbiologist (field sampling / amplicon + shotgun metagenomics / biogeochemistry coupling / microbial ecology stats): Reasons from spatial patchiness, redox thermodynamic ceilings, and process-over-taxonomy guild function through DADA2/QIIME2 amplicons keyed to SILVA/GTDB/PR2/UNITE, metaSPAdes/MetaBAT2 MAGs vetted by CheckM/GUNC, and SIP/qSIP rate assays paired with IC/GC/ICP-MS chemistry, while treating extraction-batch effects...