Just channeling Stephen J Gould: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops"

How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities? Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation. 🧵(1/n) @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

I want to emphasize that this work is NIH-funded! I'm supported by the BRAIN Initiative on a fellowship program that has been prematurely discontinued (i.e., no new applicants). It's time to organize, call our reps, and make sure we're supporting the NIH and basic research!

🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity! We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have: (1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs) (2) better hand dexterity (3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵

@luxorboero.bsky.social featured in the Humans of HBI series! @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social

Neuroscience projects last several years, and you are usually a bit jaded by the time you wrap it up. Not this one– spending several months on an island in the middle of nowhere, away from all the craziness of the world reminds you how beautiful the world really is. www.youtube.com/watch?v=46sv...

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint We discovered that the fruit fly #drosophila erecta requires food odor to mate and arousal is further enhanced by social group motion. Cross-species analysis of brain activity reveals a novel gate evolved from within a conserved circuit shorturl.at/gGYm7

New paper out! It was an honor to collaborate with the legend Leah Krubitzer on this review to show that paleontologists and neurobiologists working together can only improve our understanding of brain evolution 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s44... Full access to the paper: rdcu.be/eK167

Reposting this open postdoc position with more detailed specifications. Couldn't find the right fit in the first round—not due to lack of strong candidates, but because we're looking for someone whose expertise matches a specific project. More details in the job ad. Apply! tinyurl.com/2uskxyrp

thank you to @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social for featuring me in #HumansofHBI and for doing a fun photo shoot with me at the Museum of Natural History! go check out other members of the HBI community in the #HumansofHBI!

DHS is proposing a rule that would end "duration of status" for J, F and other visa holders. This would decimate the international graduate student and postdoc population, which are a crucial part of the United States biomedical workforce. There's still time for you to comment on the proposed rule.

Wrote a eulogy for the yellow letters in my office window. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Vox has a very good article explaining the mess that just happened at the Supreme Court. In the end, they are ensuring that no matter what happens to the canceled grants, there’s no chance of resolving fast enough to matter for the work or PIs. Struck a death blow www.vox.com/scotus/45886...

Seeking scientist volunteers for this fall! Want to practice science communication and help author a 🌟comic🌟 about your research? I need collaborators for the next cohort of SciComm & Comics art and design students. All countries and scientific fields eligible.

Amazing work on the neural basis of the evolution of escape behavior in peromyscus! congrats, Felix!!

House FY26 Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Bill proposes a 23% cut to funding for the National Science Foundation. Call your legislators and tell them no cuts to science funding! appropriations.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

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.

Hi folks — What federally-hosted data sets do you use for your research? Please reply below. I'm especially curious about more obscure .gov data sets that might be research critical for you. (And I'm interested to hear about data sets in any domain, not just life sciences!)

Are you from one of these states? Then we need your help to save American science! The Senate Appropriations Committee will be marking up the President's Budget Request for science on Wednesday. People have been saying the proposed cuts "decimated" US science, but that's wrong: they are apocalyptic

I'll be presenting at this science fair: I've done many a poster presentation, but never one quite like this!

Very happy to share the latest from my postdoc‬! 10 yrs of mouse social networks + 1.25 yrs of acoustic data ➡️ insight into vocalization & sociality in a wild population of your favorite lab model 🐁 paper: bit.ly/4n93yyD data: bit.ly/4lfFBEk code: bit.ly/4kNnMwx #bioacoustics #neuroskyence 1/8

!!!!!

“Oh I will just take a break until this blows over.” THIS is all there is unless and until people make something different.

Good reminder from @aaas.org that the proposed cuts to science are in the president's budget REQUEST. Congress can and should* continue their strong bipartisan support for American science. (*Note, should in the moral sense. I don't know what they'll actually do but I do know we can still fight)

The goal is plainly and literally to cut the number of people involved in basic science in the US by 70%

Remember folks, the budget cuts for NSF and NIH *can still be stopped*. That is a luxury not granted to our agency science colleagues who have or could still lose their jobs from the top down. So - Fight! Speak up! Pay attention!

To put these top-line budget numbers in context, cuts of this magnitude would effectively mean no new grants in FY2026. The entire extramural budget would go to existing, continuing grants. An abject failure of American ambition. And a betrayal of our global leadership in health science innovation.

As much as talk about cuts to life-altering research on Alzheimer's, cancer, etc., an equally important--or perhaps even more important--story is the hollowing out of our scientific ranks. Super important story from @chrisserres.bsky.social & @jaspar.bsky.social in @bostonglobe.com ⬇️

This hasn’t been reported as much in the media, but this attack on international scholars at Harvard seems to also affect postdocs: ~40% (3/4 of international postdocs) are on J visas (based on FAS postdoc association data) www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

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

Heartbreaking essay from our colleague & fellow @haw-uaw.bsky.social union member, unjustly imprisoned since February: “I hope that the judge rules Wednesday that I can be released, so I can return to my lab. There is a data set that I’m halfway finished analyzing. I want to go home and finish it.”

🧬 New study out: we report a chromosome-level assembly of the deer mouse Peromyscus maniculatus! A launching pad for chemosensory-evolution research. Read more 👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A. This is great. Really important. B. Talk is cheap. Let's see Sen. Collins actually wield her substantial power as Approps Chair to roll back Trump's illegal cuts and stop future cuts. www.statnews.com/2025/04/30/n... via @statnews.com

Our latest manuscript (7 years in the works) tackles the question of how diurnal ground squirrels evolved a cone-dominant retina, in contrast to the ancestral rod-dominant retina retained by virtually all other mammals./1 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

University leaders need to understand: they are holding INCREDIBLY good cards. It is so rare in today's polarized era to have the support of 70+ percent of the public against the Trump admiministration on anything. Universities have that—AND winning legal arguments.

Literally every woman I know with a k99/r00 is going to lose their funding because NIH is cancelling their funding mechanism. Every single one. Read that again.

I feel like we need to keep saying this because it’s so insane: This is a legal U.S. resident who has been detained for over a month now for his political opinions.

NIH leadership is systematically purging women and minorities from its boards of scientific counselors. The odds of this being random are 1 in 300 wapo.st/4jtCPdw

Do not panic. Organize. They aren’t smart enough or competent enough to take on all of America’s universities, probably not even a handful of them. We are stronger together, which is why they want us divided.

“I feel like something is happening generally in America,” she said, in an interview over a video link. “Something bad is happening. I don’t think everybody understands.”

A reminder that if the government can send migrants to a prison camp without any due process, it can send U.S. citizens there, too. I know because this happened to me and my family in 1942.

Oooo very excited to see more climbing mice!!!

even if Harvard's president won't defend higher ed's mission, we, Harvard's workers, will! 💪

Our statement in response to the Trump administration's attack on Harvard, together with @hgsuuaw.bsky.social, the Harvard Undergraduate Workers Union, the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter, and @huctw-rankandfile.bsky.social.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/o... Really important piece to share widely. Too many Americans don’t know how severe a threat this Administration poses to our scientific infrastructure, global leadership, and health security

NEW: Researchers have sued the NIH and HHS, alleging that they have engaged in a "reckless and illegal purge to stamp out NIH-funded research that addresses topics and populations that they disfavor" by terminating hundreds of grants, violating the APA, Fifth Amendment and the Separation of Powers.

She was here legally on a student visa, before it was unjustly revoked, and making numerous positive contributions to the Tufts and #MA7 community. This administration is terrorizing students to silence dissent because that’s what a dictator does.

heartbreaking to see the US government abandoning the future of biomedical research

We urge the Harvard administration to do more to assist in her case and her reinstatement. You can contribute to her support fund here: www.gofundme.com/f/stand-with...

URGENT: Kseniia Petrova, a bioinformatics researcher at Harvard Medical School and a member of our unit, has been wrongfully detained by ICE for over a month, and is at risk of deportation despite a clear risk of political persecution in Russia www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...