Sic ‘Em Bears!! 🐻

I am excited to share that next week I start @upenn.edu as a Provost Postdoctoral Research Fellow! I am looking forward to this next step in my academic journey, as well as the new challenges, research, and experiences this chapter will come with. research.upenn.edu/news/2025-20...

Researchers’ chances of winning a grant from the National Institutes of Health have dropped under a new policy. scim.ag/4f7uew2

Congratulations Dr. Marquise Bell on defending your PhD thesis in @ricegradschool.bsky.social Mechanical Engineering today! Dr. Bell is the fourth PhD graduate from the PI Lab. He will move to the @upenn.edu this fall as a Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow working with Prof. Kevin Turner. Great job!

Congrats @quisebell.bsky.social on your Ph.D. thesis defense!

NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years. NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."

A federal judge in Boston has rescinded the National Science Foundation’s new 15% cap on reimbursement of facility and administrative costs (F&A)—called indirect expenses—related to research grants. cen.acs.org/policy/resea... #chemsky 🧪

Thanks for highlight! Checkout this neat story highlighting my research direction and perspective on the role of mentorship.

How do you design a better space suit? Just ask Rice Ph.D. candidate Marquise Bell! His NASA-funded research on soft wearable materials is out of this world. 🚀 Inspired by his mentors, he's now empowering others. #PhDLife #SpaceTech #MentorshipMatters Read his story: giving.rice.edu/gift-mentors...

Please share widely: the MechE Rising stars program will be hosted at MIT this year on October 23-24, 2025! Our program provides mentorship for top women graduate students and postdocs pursuing careers in academia. Nominations are due *July 11*: risingstarsme.mit.edu

The proposed NSF and NASA budgets would absolutely decimate astronomy. I wrote about for @astrobites.bsky.social you can check it out here: astrobites.org/2025/06/02/b...

One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics.” Explore the article here: ow.ly/Q1BB50VZrJZ For more trending articles, visit ow.ly/OEGQ50VZrJW

Breaking News: NPR said it was suing President Trump over his executive order that aimed to end its federal funding, saying it violated the First Amendment.

Me: let’s look alive, brain, section 3 of our paper still needs a lot of work! Brain: here’s a variation on the title we were already happy with

Alright… I’ve been just as baffled at the barrage of headlines recently, however… THIS is insane.

Check out this nice story highlighting my experience with mentorship, both as a mentee and a mentor! giving.rice.edu/gift-mentors... Many thanks to Sarah Meals at Rice University for the interview and opportunity chat about my experiences and how they relate to The Rice Fund.

As the partner of someone who works heavily in the NIH space, I can tell you with 100% certainty that valuable, important, helpful science is being crushed by this administration.

This totally tubular robot doesn’t need a centralized processing system to hop around on land or swim in the water—it relies instead on air and simple physics. That and more of the best from @science.org and science in this edition of #ScienceAdviser: www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

Autonomous locomotion simply with tubes as limbs, and no brain? 🎈🤖 Yes, through physical synchronization! Our article is out today in Science (@science.org) Article: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Authors: @albertocomoretto.bsky.social, H.A.H. Schomaker, J.T.B. Overvelde More below 🧪 ⚛️ (1/6)

The US National Science Foundation has terminated 1,042 active grants over the past 2 weeks, according to a list provided to C&EN by an internal NSF source, who insisted on anonymity out of fear of retribution. cen.acs.org/policy/resea... 🧪

A little late, but I had a fantastic time at the 2025 IEEE RoboSoft conference! I had to the opportunity to share my recent work in a flash-talk format and poster, and I was honored to be named a Rising Star! It was great to reconnect and meet with with many brilliant scientists in soft robotics!

The National Science Foundation, a major government funder of basic science research, is being shaken up with over 1,000 grants already terminated and the White House looking to halve its budget.

President Donald Trump today asked Congress to make massive and unprecedented cuts to the 2026 budgets of major federal science agencies. scim.ag/3Yszqnm

The Trump administration halted $1 billion for mental health services for children, saying that the programs funded by a bipartisan law aimed at stemming gun violence in schools were no longer in “the best interest of the federal government.”

Misinformation ranks high among the many research areas President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted for deep cuts. scim.ag/4jBn6K7

It’s a very distressing moment for a lot of us in meteorology. Thousands of years of experience in our field are literally exiting this week. Gone. Just like that. And for no good reason. To them I am grateful and wish them the best. To our country: They deserve(d) better.

I got an email yesterday afternoon that my NSF SPRF Postdoctoral Fellowship was terminated. My grant focused on testing interventions to address online misinformation and I was 8 months into a two year appointment.

“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, said about President Trump's demands. nyti.ms/4jzSS9W

Breaking news: The U.S. Department of Energy today announced it is unilaterally cutting in half the overhead rate on its academic grants, something that a federal judge recently told the National Institutes of Health it could not do.

This 51% cut to graduate fellowships is a bloodbath. And it's one of the first public indications of just how much NSF thinks its STEM education budget (the EDU directorate funds the GRFP) might be slashed by Congress. (Prior, we only knew that new EDU awards were being evaluated but not issued)

Coogs.. 😞💔

Friendly reminder go Cougs tonight

It's Florida vs. Houston with a national title on the line 🏆 Who’s taking home the trophy?

COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGS!!!!

Go Coogs!!!

Starting August 1, graduate student health insurance will undergo key changes! Rice will fully cover the health insurance premium (100%) for eligible doctoral students receiving a subsidy. Learn more: graduate.rice.edu/news/current....

Breaking: President Donald Trump’s administration has begun an expected—and sweeping—purge of senior officials at the nation’s federal health agencies. scim.ag/3RwBjeE

Looking forward to the 2025 SES Meeting in Atlanta, Oct. 12-15, 2025! Please contribute to our symp. "6.1 Mechanics of Architected Materials" before 5/15 - we'll discuss key opportunities+advancements in architected material research. Exp.+Comp.+Theory welcome! @carlosmportela.bsky.social

Go Coogs. Nice, difficult road win.

Baylor MBB and WBB both lost in the round of 32 this year, and that makes me sad 😓.

A troubling moment for the next generation of scientists. UMass Chan Med School is rescinding dozens of PhD offers in biomedical sciences due to fears over federal research funding cuts. www.nbcboston.com/news/local/u...

Baylor College of Medicine's uncertainty over health research funding is prompting the school to scale back research and reduce its incoming class size. trib.al/0iKhLwa

Breaking news: NASA announced today it will eliminate its Office of the Chief Scientist, along with offices advising the agency on technology, strategy, and coordinating its diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts. scim.ag/3Ft8Xza

Haptic devices enable communication via touch, augmenting visual and auditory displays. A Review in Nature Reviews Bioengineering discusses multi-sensory wearable haptics, focusing on body-worn devices that convey multiple types of cutaneous haptic feedback. https://go.nature.com/3DoLRJo 🔒

Check out our article on multi-sensory haptic wearables in Nature Reviews Bioengineering! Led by @marcieomalley.bsky.social with @dlipomi.bsky.social and other collaborators. @riceneuro.bsky.social @ricegradschool.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Currently, NIH's Center for Scientific Review reviews 66,000 grant applications a year, with panels run by NIH’s separate institutes reviewing the rest. Under a new plan, the institute-run panels will be eliminated, and many of the scientists overseeing them will be laid off. scim.ag/3QP0FUG

"downsizes" is a weak way of saying "forced to cancel dozens of programs, which jeopardizes future STEM careers of talented undergrads" @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

Excited to share our paper in @cp-cellrepphyssci.bsky.social! Building on a fundamental study of bond strength and bursting in textile-based devices, we programmed local failure in a fuse that enables selection and sequencing of tasks with one pressure input. news.rice.edu/news/2025/ha...