We extend our deepest appreciation to Dr. Samina Akbar for her outstanding service as IAS President over the past year. Her leadership and continued service to the academy are paramount to our success!

The WSJ is confirming what I’ve always said about my alma mater: “Ball State is the Harvard of Muncie, Indiana.”

The community of Drosophila researchers is amazing, mutually supportive and collaborative. Right now a key resource for our community, @flybase.bsky.social , is threatened by the cancellation of its NIH grant and is seeking community help in raising short term funds 1/n 🧪 please share

Fall 2025 Rubenstein Lab. I am blessed to get to work with a great team of students. Looking forward to what we will learn together this year!

We're hiring TWO (two!) tenure-track assistant professors in my Biology department: cellular/molecular biology and plant biology. Within those categories, we are very open to research focus. Come work with me! And please spread the word! fa-exer-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Bittersweet to say farewell to Emmanuel Akoto, who defended his MS thesis & graduated this summer. Emmanuel made outstanding contributions to several projects & contributed to the growth & well-being of others around him. I'm excited to watch him continue to grow in his new role at Eli Lilly!

Congratulations @maliramanlab.bsky.social!! Happy to have contributed to this study.

Science in America is Dying. We Need Your Help to Keep it Alive. America can’t be great without support for the sciences. medium.com/p/99f78ab122ee

Type 2 diabetes is often considered a protein misfolding disease. But where are these toxic proteins found? 🤔 🚨In new work out today in @natmetabolism.nature.com, we show that mitochondrial protein misfolding (yes mitos🤯) leads to beta cell damage in T2D. 🚨 nature.com/articles/s42... 1/n

🚨🚨🚨PUI TT Job Alert!! My dept at TCNJ is hiring a tenure track cell and molecular biologist. Come join my supportive colleagues, helpful staff, & fabulous students! We're surprisingly well resourced w/excellent equipment (confocal, SEM etc) and research w/students counts towards our teaching load!

The Meselson and Stahl experiment demonstrated in 1958 that DNA replicated semi-conservatively. Meaning, each of the two strands of DNA serves as a template for a new copy to made of the complementary strand. Foundational finding, elegant experimental design.

Not a good look for Indiana Humanities education is super important to a thriving civilization and economy www.chicagotribune.com/2025/07/07/e...

Letters in support of the NIH are somewhat more encouraging, as they are bipartisan (incl. 11 Repub Reps, 10 Repub Senators). The House letter recommends an 11% increase over FY25, whle the Senate letter simply states "strong and sustained funding." Fingers crossed. www.aamc.org/advocacy-pol...

If you, like me, are confused about the relationship of the "Big Beautiful Bill" to the 2025-2026 Federal budget and its relevance to science funding and other issues, here is a GREAT explainer from my friend Kevin Wilson 🧪@ascbiology.bsky.social

The "Big Beautiful Bill" isn’t the federal budget—it’s a reconciliation bill focused on tax cuts. The real FY26 funding decisions for NIH, NSF, and more are happening now in Congress. www.ascb.org/science-poli...

Our EMORY MARC T34 was just reinstated in response to recent court rulings!!!

Science With a Twist is back tonight! Follow the QR code to our website for more info and tickets.

Fireflies >>> Fireworks

The findings at the recent trial and today's Columbia chaos is pushing me to the edge. I just sent the following email...

The NIH is getting most of the attention but this administration gutting funding across ALL areas of scientific research and investment, in EVERY FIELD. Say goodbye to America being a scientific and innovating leader in biology, physics, chemistry, math, etc. we’re talking 50-90% cuts to funding.

Latest preprint from the lab, many years in the making! By combining #cryoEM with #AlphaFold3 modelling, we propose that norovirus NS3 forms a transmembrane RNA translocase. This could have big implications for our understanding of viral replication & assembly (🧵) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

frog surveys aka tad polls

I am SO excited to receive this award and even more so to receive it along with @rogerslabucd.bsky.social!!!Congrats to all of the awardees and thank you for your support! We look forward to putting this award to work! 🙏🏾🎉

I am so grateful to @hypothesisfund.bsky.social for this honor. I am excited about the work we will be doing to decode the decisions that cells make: Should they stay or should they go? Phenomenal to be chosen alongside @drstarbird.bsky.social! 🤩 #DevBio #CellBio #NeuralCrest

4/ Can a cell's skeleton carry instructions that guide when cells should stick together vs move💨? Awardee @rogerslabucd.bsky.social aims to decode how cells transform in a process critical for development & cancer. 🥂Congrats Dr. Rogers! @ucdavisvetmed.bsky.social 🙏 #HFScout @drkhaynes.bsky.social

2/ How do viruses spread w/o bursting💥 & killing host cells? Awardee @drstarbird.bsky.social aims to discover the mechanisms of an understudied driver of viral spread-which could change the future of virology research! 🍾Congrats Dr. Starbird! @unc-bcbp.bsky.social 🙏 #HFScout @harmitmalik.bsky.social

calling all fly folks, keep an eye out for new system coming soon, through which you can help support FlyBase in this time of dire need.

A federal judge in Boston ordered the National Institutes of Health to restore billions of federal research dollars terminated in recent months by the Trump administration.

An NIH staffer reacts to today's ruling: "I'm looking forward to the day that we are so slammed with work trying to reinstate everything that we had to terminate illegally — I'll work 24/7 to make that happen if I can."

THIS IS IT! THIS IS HUGE!! PLAINTIFF'S WIN!! Judge Young rules that the NIH grant terminations at issue in these cases are illegal and therefore vacated. BOOM!

🇺🇸

I’ve gotten so used to people acting like I’m crazy for speaking out that I’ve been quieter only to retain my own personal sanity. But I’m so glad to hear a judge saying the same: cutting MOSAIC and other grants IS the discrimination.

🚨 BREAKING: Nearly 4 months the NIH cut its first grants, a judge has ruled that the directives and process that led to cuts are arbitrary and capricious. "The explanations are bereft of reasoning — virtually in their entirety... unsupported by [facts]." Each of them are VOID and ILLEGAL, he says.

In an experience shared by MANY of my friends, a Nobel laureate almost hit me with his car.

A Nobel laureate once insinuated I was fat (he wasn’t wrong). In a mostly unrelated incident, a different Nobel laureate got snippy with me when he wrongly thought I was taking the last piece of pizza for a seminar neither of us was attending.

A Nobel laureate once insinuated I was fat (he wasn’t wrong). In a mostly unrelated incident, a different Nobel laureate got snippy with me when he wrongly thought I was taking the last piece of pizza for a seminar neither of us was attending.

Still 25% less than the usual number of awardees, from what I understand, but great news nevertheless. 🧪

Huge thanks to @gthibault.bsky.social and Julie Hollien for organizing a warm, welcoming FASEB ER meeting filled with incredible science! Excited that I will carry the torch as a co-organizer for the 2027 meeting….can’t wait! @faseborg.bsky.social

I couldn't sleep last night and skimmed through the names on the #BethesdaDeclaration support letter page. First, the good news. (1) There were 18,000+ names and it took me 3 hours. 1/n

for the life of me, I can't fathom how they turned the *one* incredibly good thing that happened during Trump I (mRNA vax) -- something that not only saved lives but resulted in a Nobel Prize -- into a monstrous threat to humanity

put simply, getting vaccinated for COVID19 reduced your chances of ending up in a body bag -- ideally stacked on a rack in a refrigerated truck next to the hospital -- by 95% when folks talk about other endpoints, they're ignoring this

That is 54, 5-year NIH biomedical research grants. Or 270 years worth of biomedical research.

So: 👉🏻Student research can make impactful scientific contributions 👉🏻These findings and shared experiments build a community of teachers and young researchers 👉🏻Research experiences can have positive, long-lasting impacts on attitudes towards science 🚨EvolvingSTEM has reached >7500 students to date

Important and inspiring work!

He resolved that he would not stop either, even though it was a huge sacrifice on his part. I believe this is what we owe our trainees: so long as they are invested in their work, we must be as well, even if it seems like the world is on fire around us, both literally and figuratively. 10/

It would fund my R15 for 418 years, conservatively.

This parade will cost at least the equivalent of 180 years worth of an NIH biomedical research grant.

It’s that time again

If you are pissed off about what you are reading on here today, here is something tangible and important that you can do to resist, RIGHT NOW. The deadline is midnight eastern time, TONIGHT.

This is so cool, @vscooper.micropopbio.org 👏 #EvolvingSTEM at its best!