Great article. But I would say it misses one important point: you can fix all of these issues and still have the same result if you don’t fix the curriculum. What we teach matters.

Excellent news. The NIGMS Building Undergraduate Research Training (BURT) T34 NOFO is published. First due is Feb 25th, for December 26 funding. This condenses previous UG NOFOs so reach out to email/previous PO if you have Qs. files.simpler.grants.gov/opportunitie...

Me too.

She let me know that they recently received guidance that, ONLY for the January EI deadline (1/27/2026) and the February ESI deadline (2/3/2026), PIs can submit MIRAs even if their previous application (R35, R01, R15, R21, and R37) is still considered under review.

Hey all, I reached out to the PO of my NIGMS MIRA to ask if the gov't shut down, and rescheduling of study sections, might allow for some accommodation to the standard rule that PIs cannot resubmit a MIRA while their MIRA (or other RPG) is under review (waiting in scores or summary statements) 🧪

for those in my boat, the designation has changed on my grant from yesterday to this new pergatory

Somehow I got roped into reviewing a physics proposal. I hate past Alma so much right now.

I've been meaning to write it up in particular, but I do touch on it a fair bit here where I explain why the gigawatt datacenters are wasted money: pivot-to-ai.com/2025/11/07/t...

They're talking about the new Directorate TIP: www.nsf.gov/tip/latest

NSF bio hour - NSF BIO lost 40% of its staff 😑

Just from the summary, I agree. I have been struggling on finding ways to get LLMs to generate checklists for grant submissions. It can do reasonably well if all instructions come from a single document (although it still misses stuff). But, the second you get to NIH or NSF grants...

I started reading this and I am starting to view this a little differently. NSB appears to be made up of real scientists, educators, and researcher. The actual report appears to be more of an attempt to defend the science and NSF from current administration, but in a non-confrontational way.

The de-emphasis of the educational mission is worrying.

For the love of everything, stop with the grandiose language in grant proposal. No, your result is not unprecedented if I can identify 10 trials that achieved the same result with a 2 minute google scholar search. And if it's the first time it happened in your sub-sub-sub-niche ... just say that

It's true and it breaks my heart every time.

I can absolutely agree with this. On top of it, engineering aims are almost always interdependent, making interdisciplinary collaboration difficult. Instead of aims, I prefer questions - these are the question we are going to try to answer in this project.

Hard not to see the game plan for Project 2025 on peer review as gumming up the system then declaring there are too many grants and cutting review.

The #NIH IRP Summer (paid!) Internship Program for 2026 has opened its application portal. This opportunity is open to US Citizens who are college students (including rising first-years), postbaccalaureate, and graduate students, including medical and dental. The deadline is 2026/02/18!

*nodding head* This happens in US schools way too often because the focus on "skills" and abandonment of knowledge means that knowledge has to come from outside the school.

I am not even going to bore you with the number of times I have had to have a similar conversation with my children's teachers... Yes, I am that parent. And no my kids are not happy about it.

The ACS Catalyst Award for early-stage investigators with high-scoring but unfunded research projects. (Applied to NCI for an NIH R01 in & scored at or below the 15th percentile, or applied for ACS Research Scholar Grant & scored Outstanding). Deadline & details ⬇️ www.cancer.org/research/we-...

Brown University says there's an active shooter on campus. Emergency scanner says multiple victims, but unclear how many. Video footage viewed by the Brown Daily Herald "depicted several individuals lying on the ground near the Sciences Library appearing to be assisted by police."

Download our large database of postdoc fellowships in all fields of research. Database freely available to all; 281 fellowships. Download here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

The NYT wants you to think universities became dependent on government. This is false. The government invested in the national research infrastructure by competitive grants to universities. The taxpayers built this. It got us to the moon. Won the Cold War. Created Silicon Valley. Made the McRib.

The post- World War II US investment in R&D is one of the greatest economic and national security engines in history. As I said to @revkin.bsky.social a decade ago, “the budget is policy”. We should expand R&D, not shrink it. Broaden participation not restrict it. archive.nytimes.com/dotearth.blo...

Just a reminder that for these people, only people who have ever earned anything in life are white, cis, straight men. Everybody else is a DEI hire. Including Jay.

Oh I have a comment: “Loss of promising talent supported by these [DEI] programmes will substantially weaken our research capacity, limit innovation and substantially reduce discoveries important for driving scientific advancements.” pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41131402/

I keep thinking about how American educational system keeps failing kids who don't come from highly educated households because so much of knowledge is expected to come from home. You can't overcome disparities unless schools become the main source of knowledge.

Your semi-annual reminder that math instruction in American elementary schools continues to suck.

My current NIH situation - FY25 R01 scored 10% at DK, dropped in July because of MYF - Resubmitted as A1 immediately, study section cancelled due to shutdown. - January council now....delayed presumably? - Paylines gone. PO has zero idea what grants will/won't be funded - FY26 CR = more chaos

I think some folks might be happy to see this. NIGMS MIRA R35 for EI/NI has been published. PAR-26-121 files.simpler.grants.gov/opportunitie...

Here's a comparison I mocked up between the new and old organization schemes. Gray rows are old, white rows are new.

Note that reorganization should not affect grants—for now: "Budgets would still be allocated to legacy Division organization codes and Division organization codes would be used for grant awards."

NSF reorganization is, frankly, a bit odd, and we haven't run a story on it partly because it's hard to know what to make of it. The impetus for reorg, as I understood it, was to limit the siloing that occurs because NSF has so many (35ish) divisions. Now there will be 50+ sections.

NSF - Forced reorg - POs down ~ 40% (DRP, most rotators not renewed, retirements) - Forced move (and we have to pack and clean) to a building with no furniture, little to no conference space for panels, inadequate 🛜, …) I personally love the boxes they gave us for packing. “Details matter” 🙃

Fun with Word Clouds I made this word cloud based on the titles of NIH R01 grants from fiscal year 2025. 1/2

Grant writing has definitely been feeling futile for the last few months (ever since NCI's 4% payline was announced). But like Dr. Cat, for me, the act of writing and the underlying science offer solace in these bleak times.

NSF has updated the PAPPG, including this bit on misconduct. If your LLM use results in "fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism", it's on you.

The new Enabling Discovery through GEnomics (EDGE) Program page is posted. Please contact us at [email protected] if you have questions. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

I don’t know man, as a naturalized citizen myself, something about leopards and faces comes to mind…

I took care of numerous kids with fulminant hepatitis B in the 90s before the switch to getting the first vaccine at birth. I don’t recall having one since. I do not miss caring for that disease.

Just so people understand, Lysenkoism devastated science in the USSR for decades and set them far behind in scientific advancement. We will be facing similar devastation if this propaganda-based policy is allowed to continue unaddressed.

In 1925, 185 out of every 1,000 children died before the age 5 (that's 2 out of every 10) In 2020, that number was 7 out of 1,000. Those steep declines over time? Improved water infrastructure, antibiotics, and vaccines. www.statista.com/statistics/1...

Can you imagine the average American, who reads at the 8th grade level, trying to navigate through primary medical literature?

Supreme Court allowed this administration to terminate anything they deem "not aligned with administration priorities." And so, yes, this a very reasonable and valid concern.

Most of them are practicing "functional medicine" and that should be a clue to any patient that they don't know what they are doing. Also, let's not forget about the guy with a PhD in "logistics" with 0 background in biology or medicine getting a vote here.

This will absolutely kill US children. 1-1.5 million people in this country are walking around with an undiagnosed Hep B infection. But also this is just a blueprint for how they plan to mess with other vaccines. Not long until US citizens are required to show proof of vaccinations when traveling.