🚨 Postdoc opening -- Come work with us at Northwestern! 🚨 This position is to work on evaluating LLMs for sociopolitical value expression: postdocs.northwestern.edu/announcement... -- Please share!

CBITs is seeking applicants for our NIMH T32 postdoctoral fellowship to begin July 2026! Check out some of the incredible mentors you can work with and their research interests. Apps will be reviewed early December 2025! Interested? Learn more and apply: cbits.northwestern.edu/education-an...

Seattle folks: check your ballot!

Never, ever gets old. Don't forget to put your ballot in a drop box by 8pm, Seattle (it's too late to trust your vote to the mail!).

We strongly condemn @CondéNast’s consolidation plans for Teen Vogue, a move that is clearly designed to blunt the award-winning magazine’s insightful journalism at a time when it is needed the most. More from our statement:

Join us at the UW Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. We are hiring tenure-track faculty positions. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/174303

Attention #Postdoc researchers and #PhDAward candidates: CBITs is seeking applicants for our NIMH T32 postdoctoral fellowship to begin July 2026 with training in both mental health and human computer interaction Apps will be reviewed December 2025! Learn more: cbits.northwestern.edu/education-an...

1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv. There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.

Remember April 2009 when about 250,000 people took to America’s streets in Tea Party rallies and the media was like “oh man, the Dems are in trouble?” Approximately 28X as many people took to the streets to protest Trump yesterday. Didn’t even make the NYT front page.

This should be the scandal that topples an administration, not business as usual on a slow Sunday.

A Cornell University researcher has been developing an artificial heart for children for more than 20 years. Now, his research is on hold and his lab is shut down. n.pr/3KIfcSn

The Trump admin’s offer to give preferential treatment to institutions that toe the party line reeks of bribery in exchange for allegiance to a partisan ideological agenda. This is corruption. Adherence to ‘loyalty oaths’ would usher in a new era of thought policing in American higher education.

New from HCDE: Announcing our new Graduate Certificate in Human Centered AI. Learn to build AI systems that are ethical, equitable, and human-first. Courses are in the evenings, in-person, from January through September. Priority application deadline: October 24, 2025. www.hcde.washington.edu/hcai

@hcde.uw.edu is launching our new human-centered AI graduate certificate in January, with applications open now and a priority deadline of 24 October. Learn more at www.hcde.washington.edu/hcai

What DHS pulled in Chicago on Tuesday is wildly unconstitutional. They smashed down almost every door in the building, dragged entire families into the street, and detained people for hours ("Kavanaugh stops"). Ms. Fisher was held for five hours and another senior citizen was held for three hours.

Today, I was laid off from Cascade PBS along with my entire team and most of the newsroom. I'll have more to say, but I have loved my time as news editor alongside some of the best journalists I have ever worked with. Every time a newsroom closes, stories go with it. The silence that follows is loud

New paper, led by Shaan Chopra, examining how LLMs may–and may not–provide good support for personal health tracking: "Engagements with Generative AI and Personal Health Informatics: Opportunities for Planning, Tracking, Reflecting, and Acting around Personal Health Data"

At @hcde.uw.edu, we are hiring an assistant or associate teaching professor. If you are dedicated to advancing human centered design & engineering education and scholarship, and our interdisciplinary community might be the right next step in your career, I hope you will apply!

Hi Seattle! Come see my talk on the history of human-computer interaction. I'll explain U.S. gov funding of science has led to many of the innovations that power our economy & shape our lives — and call out the short-sightedness & hypocrisy of efforts to defund science in this field & so many others

New York Times story with profiles of researchers whose grants were terminated. [Gift Link] www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/o...

An amazing story by my friend & colleague, @dbseaton.bsky.social, highlights the personal, professional, & societal value of NSF’s REU undergrad research program, & the irreplaceable losses if planned funding cuts are enacted. A must-read. 🔭⚛️🧪☀️ #scicomm #citsci www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Does your work explore mis/disinformation, scams, hate speech, or other forms of harmful information online? We are convening a CSCW workshop to bring together a global community focused on information disorder. We welcome 2-6 page submissions, due August 8th. Cscw2025infodisorder.netlify.app

The thing is that full unfettered impoundment authority is effective authority to threaten and coerce a bunch of action you don’t have legal authority to compel. Unilateral impoundment authority is destruction of the rule of law.

Good grief, the US National Cancer Institute projects it will fund only one in 25 RO1 grant applications in 2026. This is massively defunding cancer research. Despicable vandalism. www.cancer.gov/grants-train...

Heard from #AHRQ that the entire grants staff has been let go! They are unable to issue funds for grants already funded, let alone fund new grants. This is outrageous and will make Americans poorer and sicker. Why? A brief thread about just some recent AHRQ-funded research: #MedSky #HealthPolicy

We know what works, and it’s the opposite of this. This agenda can’t be enacted without the cooperation and compliance of local counties and cities. It is your responsibility to either make sure your mayors and councilmembers oppose this, or work to replace them with people who will.

"Layoffs, lost faith, and 'cruel optimism' in tech" - great interview with @uw-hcde.bsky.social PhD student Samuel So on @kuow.org. www.kuow.org/stories/layo...

Researchers came from around the United States to showcase projects, ranging from modeling coastal hazards to teaching quantum information science, that were killed prematurely this spring by one of a half-dozen federal agencies. scim.ag/3Tv5iVC

A focus on the futures we will lose if the WH continues to dismantle research across agencies spanning the EPA, DHS, NIH, NSF, USAID, and DoD (via NASA Watch). When: Tuesday, July 8, 2025, 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. ET Where: Rayburn Foyer, Rayburn House Office Building nasawatch.com/congress/con...

Sotomayor reads from her dissent from the bench. From her written dissent: "Today’s ruling threatens the very essence of public education. The Court, in effect, constitutionalizes a parental veto power over curricular choices long left to the democratic process and local administrators."

Although Alito frames the remedy here as "notice and opt-out," the reality is that school districts cannot manage such a sweeping opt-out system. They are far more likely to simply pull books with LGBTQ characters off classroom shelves altogether rather than face a ruinous, high-profile lawsuit.

If the Supreme Court thinks universal injunctions are unconstitutional, to wait until *now* to say that, in this of all cases, with this of all presidents, is a devastating indictment of both its impartiality and its prudence.

Trump's ICE raids mean Washington farmers cannot harvest this year's cherry crop, and that many will now go out of business. www.spokesman.com/stories/2025...

My latest for American Scientist Magazine helps give scientists the tools to fight back against politicized charges that our research is silly or pointless- tools that will work whether you’re asked “why are we funding this” from your asshole uncle at Thanksgiving or an asshole US Senator. 🧪🌎

One thing I appreciate about my field is that nine colleagues will indulge me in a long evening walk for nostalgic ice cream (with ample opinions about favorite ice cream).

The #Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources recently released the text of a spending bill that would mandate the sale of up to 3.2 million acres of national #publiclands. If this bill becomes law, national public lands would be sold in 11 western states, including #Washington.

After ruling the NIH grant terminations illegal, Judge Young ended the hearing with an eye-opening speech. “This represents racial discrimination, and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community. That's what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out. And I do so.”

Over the next 25 years, if proposed cuts in NIH funding are made real, “In a population of more than 340 million, this reflects **82 million** fewer years of life.” In the US alone. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

"The smartphone in your pocket, the car you drive and even the air you breathe are better because of university research." Yet research at the iSchool and universities nationwide is at risk. Read Dean Anind Dey’s message on why university research is an investment worth protecting: bit.ly/4l8KzCO

A US Senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed for attempting to ask a question.

When a cabinet member announces "We are using the military to liberate an American city from its elected leaders," where do you go from there. What is left to say. The idea of that being anything short of a near-universal "Wait, what the fuck is going on" moment proves how far we've backslid.

What would you say if you saw it in another country? A senator from a coequal branch of government dragged away by security from asking a question of a Cabinet official

NEW: The Trump administration cut research funding that sought cures for future pandemics, examined the causes of dementia and tried to prevent HIV transmission. ProPublica heard from more than 150 researchers to understand the work that’s been lost.

"The board approved those scholars over the winter after a yearlong selection process.. the board learned that the office of public diplomacy at the agency had begun sending rejection letters to the scholars based mainly on their research topics." As the article notes, this is illegal.

“With every breath, we benefit from the environmental movement’s campaigns to put scrubbers on factory smokestacks, take lead out of gasoline, and add catalytic converters to cars. A 2020 study concluded that the Clean Air Act prevented between 185,000 and 370,000 premature deaths that year.” ^

HCDE Prof. Katya Cherukumilli is leading research to study and address issues with drinking water quality in WA schools. Working with state agencies, students are analyzing water testing data and identifying barriers that prevent schools from accessing and using available remediation funding.

One of the things you see with the MAHA report time after time when it's not getting basic facts wrong is this sort of thing -- here is a bullet on 3 million students considering suicide. What's missing?

We cannot continue to just “wait and see” with this. This moment requires a fast and overwhelming response from all healthcare organizations & professionals. We cannot practice safe medicine when a conspiracy theorist takes over and upends our vital institutions.

This is a PROFOUNDLY disturbing dismantling of ACIP that almost certainly lays the groundwork for a broader attack on vaccine availability throughout the United States. He's going to replace these experts with anti-vax quacks who fight to take vaccines off the market and outside insurance coverage.