The Leading Edge Fellows gathered this week to celebrate Zara Weinberg, a beloved member of our community. Our 7th cohort of Leading Edge Fellows (2026) will be named in her honor. The Zara Weinberg Leading Edge Cohort application is now open! Due Feb 2. www.leadingedgesymposium.org/apply/

Zara Weinberg passed away earlier this week. She joined my lab earlier this year when her postdoc lab formally closed. She was a brilliant scientist, supportive mentor, dear friend, avid music fan, rabid believer in public transit, open science champion, and above all just an amazing human.

🚨 SCOTUS just issued a decision in the NIH grant termination cases. And it's awful. In plain English, the likely result of this is that SCOTUS just re-terminated ~900 NIH grants worth over $1.9 billion in unspent funds This is an atrocious decision by Justice Barrett & the right wing of the Court.

Retweet to save a life

I NEED to tell you the story of Tae Heung “William” Kim. He's a graduate student at Texas A&M where he's working on a vaccine for Lyme disease. He's a *legal permanent resident* of the United States. And he's been in ICE detention for 12 days & counting, transferred Tuesday to South Texas.

As stressful as it is to run a laboratory in the US right now, my thoughts are often with the NIH staff living in the awful chaos trying to preserve the whole enterprise. I’m grateful for every moment they choose not to give up. These people are the only thing keeping it from entirely collapsing.

My second NCR was awarded, one day early. NIH staff must be working around the clock to push funding out. Let's thank our POs and SROs and all NIH staff for working selflessly to keep science progressing in this sh*tshow.

Jenna Christensen, molecular biologist and Missouri native, writes: “The message that this sends to young people is clear – science is not a stable career.” Cuts to federal research risk losing the next generation of scientists.🧪🏠 @christensenlab.bsky.social www.mycouriertribune.com/cuts-to-scie...

This perspective highlights why federal research opportunities (e.g. NSF REU internships, NSF GRFP fellowships and grant-supported technician positions) were fundamental for me to advance in the academic research ranks. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to become a scientist #saveNSF

Every academic has an angel on one shoulder saying "wow this is a brilliant proposal" and a devil on the other saying "yea, no this is crap". The devil likes to be particularly loud...

This is exactly what I was describing yesterday. So much very questionable verbal guidance. If you get a verbal order that you believe is illegal or unethical, don’t act on it. Instead, summarize it by email back to the person who spoke it to you and ask for confirmation.

Jay, please stop gaslighting early career researchers.

Today I’m leading 152 House Democrats in challenging Trump's devastating cuts to life-saving NIH research grants. Congress—not Trump—controls federal spending. Trump must do his job, “faithfully execute” the laws and stop violating the Constitution to undercut public health.

BREAKING: A federal judge in Massachusetts (the Reagan-appointed William Young) has declared the Trump administration's cuts to NIH grants — ostensibly over Trump's EOs on gender ideology and DEI — are "illegal" and "void." He's ordering many grants restored.

The Trump administration’s freezing in April of $790 million in federal research funding for Northwestern University has left concerned lab directors without key grant money from the National Institutes of Health.

Proud to be a signatory on this letter in support of the courageous staff at the NIH who penned the Bethesda Declaration to decry the ongoing politicization and damage to the US biomedical research infrastructure which has been the envy of the world.

How is this supposed to happen when institutional training grants are being terminated and delayed, fewer individual fellowships are being funded and the directorate that funds STEM education is being dismantled? It is so disappointing to see this doublespeak from scientific leaders

If you burn down a forest, you don't miss out on lumber for just that season. You have to replant all the trees, nurture them, and wait for them to grow. The science and research budget cuts happening now are wanton, senseless arson. Recovery, if it ever happens, will take generations.

My mom, who was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2000, passed away Friday at the age of 93. She took a chemo regimen called R-CHOP, which allowed her to celebrate 5 more birthdays and hold her great-grandchild. Thank you to scientists giving us those extra years with her. #ThanksNIH

Principal Investigator submitting grant proposals for federal funding Circa June 2025

HMMER is crucial to our modern understanding of protein biochemistry and has almost certainly generated at least a 10-fold return on investment for every dollar the US government has spent on funding it.

Proud to sign on this this open letter. Join me.... www.standupforscience.net/open-letter-...

I’ve seen some academic presentations over the last few weeks that I was surprised to find myself genuinely moved by. I don’t know, there’s something beautiful about people thinking hard and honestly about things they care about, and trying to explain why, in a world that manifestly DGAF.

All of NIH funding to Northwestern University is frozen. This pause includes noncompeting approved funding, new and competing grants with fundable scores. No reimbursements for money already spent have been received since March. This situation is rarely reported so please Please get the word out!

BTW. If you’re a scientist and are feeling hollowed out, depressed, fried, frustrated, confused, and simply exhausted by everything, I understand you. You are perfectly sane and you are not alone.

I am late to this but @lastweektonight.com is doing better journalism on the Trump-induced crisis in American public health than most other "real" mainstream media outlets. Watch it, all of it. #RFKMustGo. youtu.be/8H34jcpEsFs?...

"If NIH budget money, designated by Congress to be spent on medical cures, doesn’t go out over the next few months, all US scientists are looking at budget cuts that will not just take away cures but harm local economies." donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nih-bu...

Happy that we were able to contribute to this cool work from the Salogiannis lab on the discovery of a novel regulator of peroxisome hitchhiking on early endosomes!

ACTION ITEM-----ACTION ITEM Implementation of Schedule F This is what a lot of us have been worried about. This allows for many civil service positions to replaced with political appointees. This could include NIH institute directors and even POs. BUT THERE IS A COMMENT PERIOD... 1/n

More than 150 leaders of America's colleges, universities, and scholarly societies issued "A Call for Constructive Engagement" in response to the ongoing government intrusion into #highered. Read the full statement: www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-c...

The integrated stress response (ISR): what happens to my body everytime I look at the New York Times

(2) FUTURE FUNDING at NSF Here's why I rate this issue as 🚨🚨: It's a call to action! Things are being decided now! Calls to your elected representatives MATTER. ESPECIALLY TO THESE 13 PEOPLE!!! These 13 reps forms the House subcommittee that sets NSF appropriations. Live there? Give 'em a call.

If this shit keeps up I will go back to listening to Bright Eyes, I will do it, don’t TEST me. You want to make me feel like everything is out of my control like I’m 14 again? FINE. I’m gonna play that shit so loud with the windows down and you’ll have to hear that sad boy yowling TOO.

Make no mistake about it: Trump's reported decision to freeze funding at Northwestern University will put life-saving cures and critical research at risk. This freeze won't protect the Jewish students Trump claims to defend, it will instead undermine their academic endeavors.

I've already had two federal grants terminated and face a 33% pay cut due to future terminations. It's painful, but not as painful as the conversations I'm having every day with brilliant trainees in graduate school and postdoctoral positions who see little future for themselves in US science.

Stepwise photobleaching of the economy

Finally got the notice. Very sad day for the MOSAIC program that supported some of the most amazing scientists I know, as well as some of the awesome people on my lab.

BREAKING: We're suing the National Institutes of Health over their politically-motivated purge of research grants. This is an unlawful attack on scientific progress that puts lives at risk.

"So I confess that I have been imperfect, I confess that I have been inadequate to the moment, I confess that the Democratic Party has made *terrible* mistakes that have given lane to this demagogue." - @corybooker.com More of this, honestly, please. Acknowledge it. Please.

It's going to be a brutal day at the NIH. Never forget what the Republicans have done to science. I never want to hear that there is "bipartisan support for research" ever again. Congress could step in at any moment.

This exciting resolution from Rutgers University Senate is exactly the kind of model I think higher ed needs: a mutual defense pact of, in this case, Big 10 schools. They call for member institutions to create a joint defense fund and make resources available to any member institution under attack.

Roundtable this Wed at the US Senate, on how Trump and Musk are killing research like cancer and Alzheimer’s research. 2:30pm Eastern. There is a livestream. This would be better in primetime and produced for TV, like the Jan 6 Committee did. But it’s a good start from @baldwin.senate.gov.

BREAKING: We are suing the Trump admin on behalf of our members for unlawfully cutting off $400 million in federal funding for crucial public health research to force Columbia University to surrender its academic independence. Stay Tuned.

You can’t say you’re against DEI because you want “the best person for the job” and then hire the guys who leak war plans over Signal.

If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.

White House says no one will be fired over the Signal scandal because no one involved was trying to cure cancer.

🧵Yesterday, I received notice that my #NIH grant, on the social environment, lifecourse, epigenetics & #birthoutcomes in Black families, was terminated. This grant represented a critical effort to address the ⬆️ rates of maternal & infant mortality in the US, particularly among Black mothers & babies

It’s been a devastating 24 hours with 3 NIH grants terminated…all focused on the health and wellbeing of trans or intersex youth. If folks have any ideas of foundations that may be interested in supporting the completion of these projects so years of work aren’t wasted, please let me know. 🙏

They are coming for every university, if you think you’re safe because it hasn’t been yours yet I don’t know what to tell you. Join AAUP, refuse to comply, organize your colleagues