#CHI2026 program is shaping up: here's the first glimpse at the list of accepted workshops: chi2026.acm.org/workshops/ac... This will be a really fun @chi.acm.org ! (Reminder that there's no added fee this year to attend workshops, they will happen throughout the conference!)

Join us for the final talk of HCDE’s 2025 Research Speaker Series! This Thursday, Assistant Professor Sucheta Ghoshal will share insights from her work with social movements that actively resist dominant computational technology. 📅 Thursday, Dec. 4 ⏰ 4:30 – 5:20 p.m. 📍 134 Sieg, UW campus

I’m giving a free/public talk this Tues in Seattle about how US government investment in science laid the foundations for the field of human-computer interaction and how that field (and investment) connects to so many of the innovations that we take for granted, as well as the future of AI.

At @hcde.uw.edu, we will be hiring an Assistant or Associate Teaching Professor this coming year! Timing wise, we are hiring for a Sept. 2026 start date, but could be sooner. We are looking forward to welcoming a new colleague! Learn more and apply at apply.interfolio.com/171881

1. Federal funding for research promotes tech, biomedical, and scientific discovery in the US, and provides training for the sci/tech workforce that has brought immeasurable wealth to the US over the past 75 years. Today's executive order includes a provision that will obliterate both functions.

If anyone is curious about the current list of search terms being used by right wing activist organizations to harass university professors, here's a public records request I received today from Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation. Not intimidating or meant to curtail by my speech at all, right?

Excited about this upcoming #CHIPLAY2025 paper led by @nishadevasia.bsky.social on people’s meaningful experiences with games!

We got a visit from @seattletimes.com on Monday at KidsTeam. You can try Aayushi Dangol's AI Puzzlers for yourself! @hcde.uw.edu @ischool.uw.edu @juliekientz.bsky.social @jasoncyip.bsky.social

BREAKING: Scientists are staging a “science fair” in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled.

MAGA is more than a political movement—it’s a symbolic system that answers dislocation with identity, confusion with clarity, and loss with belonging. If we want to push back, we need more than critique. We need a new story—and the civic infrastructure to support it.

The failure of the National Academy of Sciences USA to make a clear and unequivocal statement about the disastrous Trump administration science policies — it lets all of us down and dooms them to eventual irrelevance.

Super proud of @nishadevasia.bsky.social for leading the research for this #DIS2025 paper!

If you want to see the planned impact on science with the proposed National Science Foundation cuts, this table in particular demonstrates it most devastatingly. Going from 330,000 people to 90,000 people involved in NSF activities. #SaveNSF From: nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

Offshore wind and marine energy can boost energy security and economic revitalization along our coastlines. HCDE’s Shana Hirsch leads research that centers community voices in the development of this emerging industry, but recent cuts to federal funding put this community-driven research at risk.

I’m hoping that there will be some rapid action to get legal support to the PhD students who have had their NSF GRFP (fellowships) terminated in the Trump regime’s latest attacks on academia.

💯

say it again: 4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities ROI for NIH and NSF for local economies is conservatively 4x, often close to 10x demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

ProPublica continues to earn my monthly workplace giving donation. I encourage you to support their journalism as well.

Yes! We have to move the needle on public perception of science. Scientists can share their story in a LOCAL HOMETOWN PAPER op-ed, published June 16! #McClintockLetters #SciComm Share how we serve the public with fed dollars, & insights into fed funded research. tinyurl.com/McClintockLetters

Happy Birthday, #NSF. Thank you for all you’ve done for promoting science and innovation for the betterment of society. #SaveNSF

On the NSF's 75th: “‘NSF investments have driven groundbreaking innovations, from the internet and LASIK eye surgery to the first image of a black hole... The foundation has also played a key role in the work of 268 Nobel Prize laureates, helping to shape many of their landmark achievements.’”

🧪 Ranking member Lofgren and 11 other House dems sent a fiery 7-page letter to acting NSF director today "The cancelation of these awards suggests instead that NSF is willing to apply political censorship of awards under direction from President Trump and the DOGE teenagers" Share widely #SaveNSF

Uggghh… more harmful and destructive shenanigans going down at #NSF

Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.

This absolutely. I definitely would not have gone into research if I hadn’t been supported first by an #NSF REU program as an undergrad and then an #NSF graduate fellowship. I didn’t even know what research was or how one got into it until I participated in an REU program.

The bloodbath against science and universities continues to be devastating. Scientists have invested many hours into writing and reviewing these grants. Many CAREER awards have been included in these terminations, which often represent our brightest junior researchers.

UPDATE: We have data on >1000 terminated #NSF grants at grant-watch.us. Thanks to all who have been contributing data the past few days. We've also added a "Reports" section with some analyses. For NSF, we see that the STEM education directorate has been absolutely pummeled.

Terminating the grants to study misinformation is “an overt act of censoring and preventing accountability,” says Stephen Lewandowsky, a misinformation researcher at the University of Bristol. “Who other than a liar would cancel misinformation research?” 🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Welcome to Bluesky, @uwdub.bsky.social !

🧪 Tip: You have the right to contest a grant termination, even though NSF says you don't. 🧵 On Friday, NSF terminated 402 grants (per Musk's DOGE). The notification letters had one of the most egregious violations of fed regulations I've seen so far in these cases: "not subject to appeal"

After 21 years at my dream job, I’m very sad to announce my early retirement from the National Institutes of Health. My life’s work has been to scientifically study how our food environment affects what we eat, and how what we eat affects our physiology.

A pause to NIH funding has researchers scrambling for contingency plans at the University of Washington’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. The center’s brain bank is preserving more than 4,000 brains for research.

Ready to advance your career in UX research & design? HCDE’s Graduate Certificate in User Centered Design is a five-course, evening program for professionals ready to deepen their skills. Join us for an upcoming info session—applications due July 2025. Details: www.hcde.washington.edu/ucd

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?

Universities, including law schools, need to strategically speak out at the same time and together. If you're too scared to come out in a small group, say you'll only sign if 90% of schools sign on. Stop competing to save yourselves!

Yesterday’s update from Heather Cox Richardson is an important but difficult read. It summarizes everything that has happened since January and why. Please find ways to take action in your communities - the changes are destroying our institutions and will harm everyone, no matter what your politics.

Trump regime is now claiming the shockingly stupid, dangerous, and illegal Signal chat & leak of attack plans is a "HOAX" — just like Russian interference in 2016 & Jan 6. No matter how much evidence there is, if Trump & supporters don't want it to be true, it's a hoax. www.cnn.com/2025/03/27/p...

When scholars of authoritarianism and fascism leave U.S. universities because of the deteriorating political situation here, we should really worry.

A great infographic of what the Dept of Ed actually does. Also, it is the WORST time to pull resources from students with the highest need. Learning gaps post COVID between kids who grow up in low vs high income households are large - and this will be devastating

I helped build a government AI system. DOGE fired me, rolled the AI out to the whole agency, and implied the AI can do my job and the jobs of the others they've fired. It can't. But, what DOGE accidentally revealed about themselves in the process is fascinating. 🧵

being an indie bookseller in the helltimes has felt both very stable and very stabilizing, and part of me wishes everyone could be on my side of the counter for a little while, because I think it would help some of you be a little less cynical and doomy right now. so here is my VERY anecdotal data:

There are days in life that shake you. I’m shattered 💔 to share that I just found out that the US Government terminated my 2024 NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (~$2 million), threatening my long-promised assistant professor job at Columbia University & academic career... 1/🧵

America’s great research universities were not invented in Silicon Valley garages or cooked up by venture capitalists. For centuries, they’ve been built by scholars, bolstered by benefactors, and scaled up by the state. The government is now trying to destroy them. The damage will be profound.

These are (among) the stories that need to be told, by the people who are experiencing them, in ways that their families and communities can understand. If the sound is these attacks on science is silence… then clawing back what we’ve lost will be even harder, possibly impossible.

New report shows that NIH grants fueled $95 billion in economic activity and 407,782 jobs in 2024. That's not to mention the countless lives that biomedical research has saved. Show me a better investment than that. www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

I'm just a small-town professor. I'll never be a provost or chancellor. But here's some free advice: we're about to hold the most watched college sports event in 🇺🇸. Every college president should be all over TV, at every game, explaining why the March Madness of federal budget cuts is a huge crisis.

💯 This op-ed by ed research leaders made that essential point quite forcefully: "Abruptly ending near-complete projects does not drive efficiency. Instead, it ensures that the public sees no benefit from the investments already made, converting what was productive spending into waste."