🧬✨ Meet Dr. Juan Manuel Vazquez, one of our newest faculty members in Penn State Biology! His lab explores one of life’s biggest mysteries: why do some animals live so much longer than others? 👇🧵

This is why I can’t muster empathy for Charlie Kirk. He worked hard at ensuring our children face as much gun violence as possible. My empathy is reserved for these kids and that community.

This week was the first official week of the Vazquez Lab, with everyone officially starting! Not only did we have a great first lab meeting today, but we also had great (and comically excessive) ice cream from the Penn State Creamery!

Hope is only lost when we stop fighting back.

Listed are some of the many NIH research training programs that were terminated! Together, these programs supported thousands of trainees, whose careers are now in limbo. Such a great loss for discovery and innovation. We must protect our next generation of scientists! #HandsOffNIH #ProtectScience

On the one hand, I should save up startup - on the other though, getting real tired of running around with 17lbs of laptop...

The propagation of misinformation on social media is among the greatest threats to public health right now. Many people want to ignore this, but there are millions of Americans who have been groomed to believe that science is just some kind of scam.

It’s deeply pathetic that Senate Democrats are continuing to advance bipartisan funding bills while Trump unconstitutionally seizes the right to impound funds, and implements a police state. Murphy is absolutely right on this one.

Had a ton of fun at #2025IBRC! Got to see flying foxes for the first time (and folks dressed as flying foxes!), lots of cool wildlife, and shared some cool science! Also got to advertise my new lab - which I'm now off to start!

Excited to talk about balancing selection, hybridization, and independent evolution at the #SMBE2025 hybridization & introgression symposium! Symposium 14: Day 3, Room 2 @ 11:30am Beijing Time

A incredibly powerful article from @cbsnews.com and Ted Koppel. 🧵 “Natalie Phelps has Stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer. She and her husband, Jeff, live in Washington State.”

BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore millions of dollars in canceled grants to University of California researchers, calling the terminations flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Good morning, this is a very helpful tool for keeping track of the critters and sharing data. 🧪

Colossal Bio threatens legal action against a critic of their scientific claims. 😬 It's very interesting that the letter doesn't actually *deny* that Colossal, its CEO, and their agents are leading a smear campaign against Lynch, instead focusing on the fact that he can't *prove* that they did. 🤨

@kenwhite.bsky.social The company that falsely claimed to de-extinct the dire wolf is now threatening legal action against a scientific critic for "defamation". Would New York's anti-SLAPP statute protect against this?

I had been quiet about the illegal termination of my K99, but I'm very happy to see it included among the list of grants ordered to be reinstated - let's just hope that it's done sooner rather than later so I can submit the RPPR, the renewal, and the R00...

Wow, I’ve just found a Bluesky channel that lets you see only posts with links to scientific papers and get a feed that focuses on the science discussions around them. This is transformative!

Every flashbang could instead be a meal for a poor kid. Every hotel room for a National Guardsman deployed to fire at our neighbors could house a homeless vet. Every "less-than-lethal" bullet pulled from a journalist's eye could be already needed healthcare for anyone else. All of this is a choice.

Read the letter for yourself. 16/

Make open access to tools and data part of your annual giving by making a tax deductible donation to @veupathdb.org. 💙This resource simplifies and supercharges global infectious disease research. Need more reasons to support VEuPathDB? Here's a short list: veupathdb.org/veupathdb/ap...

I always have superglue in my toolbox for woodworking - usually it's for gluing wood, but sealing chisel-induced gashes is a 10/10 secondary role!

Its always important to find the time to celebrate the little things - or big things, like graduations and new labs!

Cardiac Adaptations in the Cave Nectar Bat Eonycteris spelaea: Insights into Metabolic Resilience and Stress Response https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.15.653669v1

I work in grants. From my POV, the solution is not to compete for crumbs, but to put that effort into banding together across institutions to stand up for research. We need to yell at politicians and make sure Americans know what they’ll lose if university research ends.

PIs who think their research isn’t political: yes it is, it always is

Choose Science. Choose Europe. A new Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 call is now open. With a budget of €404.3 million, it will support around 1,650 researchers from Europe and beyond. Apply by 10 September → europa.eu/!fBTMgF

I’m very glad to share our recent publication @pnas.org , led by UnJin Lee from our lab at @rockefelleruniv.bsky.social : pnas.org/doi/10.1073/.... In this work, he 1) developed a method to efficiently compare single-cell RNA-seq data from rapidly evolving tissues across multiple species, and

I'm thrilled to share that I'll be joining the Department of Genetics at UGA as an Assistant Professor in January! @universityofga.bsky.social Genetics@UGA #newPI

Come look for me at #BoG25 if you wanna learn more!

I'm proud to announce that the Vazquez Lab will officially be opening its doors at Penn State in August 2025! The lab will be studying the evolution of longevity-associated traits and the gene regulatory networks that govern them across extraordinarily long-lived mammals at all levels of life.

GenomicsSky! Asking for suggestions for genomics/data analysis workshops that grad students can take this summer (or whenever) 🙏 Pleast RT. In a time where opportunities have been slashed everywhere, any prof dev opportunities for students would be incredibly welcome!

To be clear, our grants were included in study sections with non-MOSAIC applications, judged against them using the same criteria, and awarded on merit. My K99 was my best scoring grant, ever, by a mile. We just had to write an additional diversity statement.

Everyone’s answer us losing our grant is “apply for more grants”. Do you know what it’s like to be attacked all day in news/government/by colleagues debating “DEI”, to have students coming to you for advice during this trying time, and then to try to sit down and focus to write?

Listening to these MOSAIC/PREP/IMSD, etc. scholars talk about how limited their options have become, I’m going to ask that more of you ‘put your money where your mouth is’ Losing them because of these grant cancellations IS an actual example of policy discrimination.

The only way forward, that I can see, requires both courage and collective action. If we’re not going to fight for our students and our scholarship, then what the hell are we doing anyway?

Our latest paper, in which @brinda.eu (along with @zaminiqbal.bsky.social and others) introduces phylogenetic compression for storage and search of enormous microbial genome libraries, was published today in @naturemethods.bsky.social: rdcu.be/eg4OA 1/

🧪 #ScienceSky and #AcademicSky: We’re trying to learn more about the real-life scope and impact of the Trump administration terminating NIH grants. Here's how you can help our reporting 👇

🚨 BREAKING: I'm suing #RFKJr @ #HHS & #JayBhattacharya @ #NIH Canceling medical research grants threatens innovations benefiting ALL Americans, no matter your politics! 🇺🇸 Thanks to my lawyers @aclu.org @aclum.bsky.social @protectdemocracy.org & @cspi.bsky.social Long 🧵 on why I'm suing 👇 1/

these are our party leaders now, ignore all other opinions

I would support this! We need to primary the dinosaurs.

Living the Dream (Theater)!

I'll be in Boulder - come say hi, or go stand in solitary at a site near you!

We're at the "French University is offering grants to refugee scientists censored by the regime" stage of our country www.404media.co/french-unive...

Yall better be both sharing the Stand up for Science posts /and/ figuring out how to get your butt to one of them! @standupforscience.bsky.social

WHERE WILL YOU BE ON MARCH 7TH!? Head to www.standupforscience2025.org/local-event-information/ or the link in our bio to find your closest event—or add one if you're hosting one! #standupforscience2025

It's can't be all doom and gloom. There is Resistance and that Resistance is working Tesla stock is down 30% in this last month. The economic boycotts have begun news.yahoo.com/economic-bla...

Upon learning that yesterday would be my last day as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, I shared this parting message with my colleagues. The next few months will be frenetic and stressful for them. Here are some things that you can do to help them with the mission ahead. (1)

Boy, the best way to be informed about what's happening to American science is on bluesky. Please send your colleagues to this platform, everyone! Should we make a starter pack to help?

Relieved that the MOSAIC K99/R00 grants.gov page is no longer expired (updated today), and it sounds like people are able to submit apps again 🧪