Excited to share that I landed my dream job!🎉🎉🎉 The Pennington Lab will be opening at the University of British Columbia in January 2026! @ubcpsych.bsky.social @dmcbrainhealth.bsky.social

With 2 postdocs moving on to faculty positions🥳, we're looking to hire someone new. If you're interested in norepinephrine and neural circuits, please apply! tinyurl.com/42bfe24k

Excited to share this new work from the lab, in collaboration with @jtuscher.bsky.social & Rob Sorge! Here, we used single cell transcriptional profiling to define molecular adaptations induced by chronic pain and opioid experience, which often occur in conjunction. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Honored by this spotlight 😊 Grew up in the ACNP: from baby PD 👶, to early career faculty member chairing the Experience and Resilience Committee💪🇵🇷 Grateful for a community that develops careers alongside science🧠 Looking forward to seeing all y'all at the E&R events in the Bahamas! 🌴☀️🌊🇧🇸

One of my favorite events that we @uabneuro.bsky.social host each year, and excited to have @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social here for the keynote!

Good morning everyone! So, I wrote a book (!!) and it’s coming out November 4th in physical and audiobook form. It’s called *How to Change a Memory* www.amazon.com/How-Change-M...

I've noticed a trend in requests for tenure reviews, asking letter writers to compare candidates to other "top" scholars at the same career stage. Can we please not do this?!? Making tenure a moving and competitive target risks ratcheting up increasingly untenable expectations for productivity.

Happy Alabama Slamma Day to those who celebrate

Sneak peak before they're cleaned up. Psychedelic rainbow with dendrites + spines. Is it perfect? no. Was a rainbow with a custom 3D printed embed a bit ambitious for someone who has only made 4 batches of soap? Yes. Definitely.

🔥🔥 those from low income backgrounds are also our parent's primary source of financial relief, and that there are usually no $$ retirement plans

For ESIs dealing with grants being rescinded: if an investigator’s 1st substantial independent research award is terminated within the first 3 years of the project period (not due to scientific misconduct ) they can request the reinstatement of ESI status grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

#AltPride #AltGov To close out Pride Month, we are recognizing neuroscientist Ben Barres. Beyond making seminal discoveries related to glial cell function, he was also a staunch advocate for equality in science for both women and the LGBTQIA+ community. 1/n www.nature.com/articles/d41...

SIGHING WHILE PULLING UP TOMMY T AND KATIE B'S CONTACTS IN MY PHONE

Heading back from #IBNS2025 in Tromsø with an overnight layover in Copenhagan, feeling so invigorated and excited to return to the lab!

All you had to do was elect two brilliant, diligent, overqualified Women.

Refreshing Commons to check an R01 score knowing that even if it scored well, there's no money 🫠

Just standing here, asking reviewers for fellowships to double check when an assistant professor started their lab and ask, 'well what might have happened early on in that process that could have slowed down publications?'

#NEURAL2025 panel on Enhancing Training in Neuroscience is 🔥🔥🔥 #LeadingwithExcellence

Loving the session on Imposter Syndrome at #NEURAL2025! #LeadingwithExcellence

Principal Investigator submitting grant proposals for federal funding Circa June 2025

happy pride month to bluesky, a platform that is successful today because of the trans and queer users who made it a cool place to be. love y’all 🩷❤️🧡💛💚💙

Trump’s cuts to research programs directly harms scientists from working class backgrounds. Bridges built between the blue collar and ivory tower are collapsing in front of us.

Welp, looks like this is happening--officially Chair of my department as of July 1. Can't believe they tried to kick me out and now we're here.

My quote of the day We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. Elie Wiesel

Between review/publication delays, cuts to grants, and broader financial insecurity and uncertainty, every institution should revise its promotion criteria (if it hasn’t recently). We’re in a new environment, and even criteria written 5 years ago are less applicable now.

"NIH funding is gone, so you should pivot to private foundations for funding" Meanwhile, private foundations:

I honestly feel incredibly aggrieved for those like me who learned they are losing their NIH funding, but also for everyone who gave their all to their application only for it to be dismissed and not even given the time of day.

Gotta make sure there's room in the lifeboats for first class before we think about everyone else

Disappointing (but not surprising) to see well-resourced institutions just continually drop the ball and fail to live up to the most basic expectations.

Just got news that @hhmi.org decided to not review Hanna Gray fellowship applications. I am sorry but that’s fucked up. People spent months working in those. So now you disadvantaged these candidates even more. They could have used the time to advance their research instead.

I’m excited to share a new paper from the lab. The study led by Xiaowei Gu reveals how the mPFC encodes complex emotional memories, using an internal model to infer emotional associations and memories via projections to the amygdala. a🧵(1/8) rdcu.be/el19t

I am thinking a lot today about how heavy things feel in my world of faculty doing scientific research. There's the immediate chaos and panic about our ability to pay people and continue our research. But there's also a deeper grief at watching everything get bulldozed for no reason

"Women are PIs on 58% of the canceled grants, although they are PIs on only 34% of all active NSF grants. Similarly, Blacks are PIs on 17% of the terminated grants, although they make only 4% of the total pool. Hispanic PIs and those with disabilities were twice as likely to lose a grant."

Had a fantastic time visiting my PhD alma mater, SUNY Buffalo, and was honored to give a talk at the annual Biochemistry Research Day! It was so nice to catch up with those who shaped me into the scientist I am today and to see the next generation thriving! 🧪🔬👩‍🔬

Our latest work extends ketamine’s antidepressant action and highlights the importance of a specific form of synaptic plasticity in the effects www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Just a regular old science post - I was delighted to write the Preview piece to accompany a new paper in Neuron by Jose Morón's lab, which finds estrogen/dopamine interactions can mediate sex differences in pain-driven fentanyl taking. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🚨HEY DORKS, WE NEED YOUR HELP🚨 We preparing for a BIG fight against Trump's attack on science and we won't stop until we win! We are grassroots and run on donations. Whether it's $5 or $500, every little bit counts in the fight to save science. #standupforscience actionnetwork.org/fundraising/...

🧪 What the f is going on with NSF right now??? 🚨🚨🚨 There's been so many NSF updates within the past 48 hours that it's hard to keep track. It feels like an onslaught. It *is* an onslaught. But it's still vital to remain focused, organized, and strategic. So here's my recap of past 48 hours...

The average American has three friends

The average American has three (and a half) friends

Pause for a minute to appreciate the valiant Program Officers still at NSF, who are doing their utmost to preserve what they can. They’re in the stinking rotting belly of the beast, laboring on our behalf. ❤️❤️❤️❤️ to them

"I would not have dared to dream that metastatic melanoma would become a treatable disease in my lifetime. Yet here we are today, with 43% of people diagnosed with metastatic melanoma living 10 years or more, due to treatments that we broadly refer to as cancer immunotherapy." Barry P. Sleckman, UAB

“MOSAIC awardees were chosen using a definition of diversity beyond race, gender, and disability. It includes those who grew up in poor households or rural areas or were raised by parents who do not have college degrees.” 🧪

Losing my grant doesn’t make me worried that having it on my resume will hurt my career. Rather, I worry about what it means for science, I worry about it means for the active work I do and will KEEP doing to uplift, I worry about what it means for upcoming and future scientists.

This is America.

Catching up with colleagues and I feel like "have any of your grants been terminated yet" is the new "have you had COVID yet" from 2022 and I hate it.

🚨 Well fuck… 1. DOGE has finally setup shop at NSF this week. (everything that’s happened at NSF thus far has largely been *without* direct DOGE meddling) 2. NSF is halting making new awards across *all* directorates to rereview proposals for alignment with exec orders.

The quoted thread is a really important perspective. If I can add some unsolicited thoughts and advice -