I'm very excited about this new preprint on our work (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...). We re-engineered gel electrophoresis for our DNA-base biosensors and came up with a 3D printed mini-gel, complete with electrodes. short thread...

New preprint from our lab, really exited about this one and may post more about it later this weekend

Our light guided molecular patterning method for high-throughput single-molecule studies just published today in Small! Programmable, covalent, multiplexed, accessible. doi.org/10.1002/smll...

What better way to start the year then with a deep dive into multiplexed force spectroscopy? It was a lot of fun putting this together with @halvorsenlab.bsky.social. Hope you check it out!

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

Starting the new year with a review article! (with @wesleywonglab.bsky.social) This feels like a pretty big accomplishment. I remember how much I relied on annual reviews as a grad student to dive into a subject, so its surreal to be on the other side... www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

suspect a big reason why many academics and others who work in areas where getting facts RIGHT is key are disinterested in using LLMs for research: they’ve tried it, they keep noticing major errors in output, and they conclude that having to verify all that doesn’t actually save them time.

I may be reading this wrong, but there seems to be conflict between the PAR-26-121 instructions and new biosketch instructions. In particular the "contributions to science" which MIRA calls for with citations and new biosketch which doesn't allow citations. Anybody resolved this yet?

imagining a NSF PO handing a VC bro the stack of 10-to-15 proposals they'll have to be ready to discuss, then explaining that they'll be paid $600 for the three days of the panel meeting

Excited to be featured in this @cenmag.bsky.social piece with @standupforscience.bsky.social friend @jeremymberg.bsky.social ❤️✊ cen.acs.org/policy/nih-n...

Christmas came early! New science toy from @lumicks.bsky.social for @thernainstitute.bsky.social - very excited to get this all set up and operational.

Our latest lab paper (and last for @jibinpunnoose.bsky.social) is out! We look at strand polarity in base stacking interactions, with single-molecule measurements and MD simulations with collaborators in Chen and Vangaveti labs @thernainstitute.bsky.social pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Hey @nature.com, have you got an explanation for how the hell THIS happened? & especially why you accepted a paper with such a bizarre piece of genAI slop in it?! & more to the point, why we should take you seriously at all going forward? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dang, hard disagree. The best papers to write and read are works of art, not merely a list of data and statements. Don’t let LLMs take this away too, for gods sake.

ICYMI: #UAlbany's Life Sciences Research Building will get a $50M state-funded expansion to support The RNA Institute. The funding will advance the Institute's research, training & workforce development, including its use of AI to guide drug discovery. www.albany.edu/news-center/...

Some really nice fundamental biophysics of DNA base stacking 🧬!

Well, it's been a minute but we have a new preprint to share! Final project in our lab by @jibinpunnoose.bsky.social, investigating strand polarity in base stacking. We measured experimentally with centrifuge force microscope and computationally with MD. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New editorial by Madhan Barathraj and me, discussing DNA nanostructures for nucleic acid delivery, is now online at Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Yesterday we bid farewell to Jibin, who has been in the lab for 7 years and is starting as Assistant professor of chemistry at SUNY New Paltz. Congrats and best wishes - we were so fortunate to have you in the lab.

We need a new microscope objective. A $1.6k tariff for something that you can hold in your hand and that is only manufactured in Germany

NEW: In an unprecedented move, the NIH will soon disinvite dozens of scientists about to take positions on advisory councils that make final decisions on grant funding. NIH staff were told to select others aligned with the Trump administration and told to expect placements by political appointees.

This is so sad...plus I'm all in on science, there is no plan B

Wake up, losers - new giant rat testomcelles have just dissilced, and they have truly got their dck out. If you go to Africa, here are some localities you should avoid: GUTNED CLINE LSOGLE NAOZAWA V GROSGRIVER

Join the 22,339 people who have joined to support our NIH colleagues. Let's get this to 50,000 RT

Announcing an official fundraising campaign to support my lab’s research on APOE4 and Alzheimer’s disease: joinus.cuimc.columbia.edu/participant/.... This campaign is itself an experiment of sorts. But mostly, it's an attempt to save my lab during an unprecedented time of turmoil in academia. 1/9

For non-scientists: the funding rate is somewhere between 7% to ~25% (rare) for NIH or NSF grants, depending on where you are applying. Grants are reviewed by a panel of peers who read the grants, score them, then debate the ratings for 1-2 days to rank them. It is INCREDIBLY competitive already.

🚨 NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya is testifying before the US Senate Appropriations Committee today. The hearing is bound to be spicy, after more than 300 agency staff wrote him a letter decrying his leadership and actions as director. 🔥 I'll be live-posting the hearing, so follow along here.

The NIH has not issued a single new call for proposals since the end of January.

Breaking news: Staff at the National Institutes of Health have issued a declaration calling on their director to depoliticize the agency and reverse spending cuts.

Let's have some fun. In this NYT story, we see a picture of an OpenAI billboard on a college campus, suggesting the following prompt: "Give me a guide for mastering this Calc 101 syllabus. In two weeks. Small steps please." What happens when we actually use ChatGPT to do this? THREAD!

uh-huh, LMK when its working so I can retire

"If the proposal is enacted, Americans today and tomorrow will be sicker, poorer, and die younger” an $18 Billion cut Only 3 NIH Institutes will remain in place, and even they will have their funds markedly reduced www.statnews.com/2025/05/30/n...

A Harvard scientist built a database of 2,100 NIH grant terminations. Then his own funding was cut, via @statnews.com

Good cover @economist.com

7.5 billion in NIH grants terminated. NIGMS leads the list of recently terminated grants (134). grant-watch.us/posts/700-ne...

Not surprised... I had JIT requests for a recent NIH application that seemed not written by program staff. In particular I had to explain how an S10 grant to purchase high-end equipment is not "DEI", and how a single-molecule study pulling an RNA is not "gain of function" research.

Tariff surcharges become reality for doing science --coming to your appliance and grocery stores soon 🧪

Northwestern has not received any NIH funds since March. No written communication about why or what can be done. Thank you Ben Singer for raising awareness at #ATS2025

#NIH is still termination grants, zeroing out budgets, and issuing stop-work orders. But they are hiding more and more of it from the public. More than ever we need people to report so researchers can advocate and organize. Please report at grant-watch.us/submit-nih.h...

You feel bad. But do not think you’re lucky it’s not you. It’s not you *yet*. Call your reps and senators. Push back. We need science. Don’t let them break NIH.

Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/

What's happening with these grants is much more complicated and mostly unknown. None of the NIH have been officially cancelled. The NIH was just ordered to stop paying. They got the Unis to enforce silence on their own campuses because they thought they were "negotiating" and cld get the funds back.

Excited to share our new preprint! It's a light-guided approach for precise and programmable molecular patterning, enabling multiplexed single-molecule force spectroscopy—no lithography needed. Read more at doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Budget released today: 40% cut to NIH 50% cut to NSF If enacted, this will destroy academic research in the United States. It will also have a major trickle down effect on the entire academic ecosystem

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“However bad everyone on the outside thinks it is, it is a million times worse. They’re dismantling and destroying everything.” Read, share, respond. Call your representatives. The health and well-being of Americans & America's innovation economy are at stake. www.science.org/content/arti...

This feels existential for US science: To get any future medical research funding, an entire university would need to certify that it won't have programs doing DEIA work (e.g. note-takers for blind students, veteran's support, women's resource groups, etc.) No institution could *ever* comply.

I never thought I'd have to justify purchase of scientific equipment as not being DEI, but here I am writing that justification to NIH.

Along with the firings of up to 1300 co-workers this week and the removals of several institute leaders, NIH employees are dealing with another blow from the administration of President Donald Trump: a mandate to eliminate $2.6 billion in contracts. scim.ag/43XU1nd