I'm very excited to announce that UNC Biology has 6 faculty positions open this year! The first is for an Asst Professor who studies organismal resilience using an integrative approach 1/n unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

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.

This is probably one of the coolest and most creative mouse models I’ve ever seen!

I do biomedical research to help people. When people come in this space making things up, it makes it harder for people not in the field to trust the extensive studies that we do and distinguish fact from fiction. Baseless claims reduce future cures. Willful ignorance drives us backwards.

Great department, great institution, wonderful colleagues! This is an outstanding opportunity

My department at Emory is a hiring a tenure-track neuroscientist! Anyone who's talked to me in the last 4 years knows I cannot say enough good things about my dept and the neuroscience community here. My colleagues are so wonderfully supportive. Postdocs, please apply! apply.interfolio.com/174371

We initiated this open letter yesterday, before the solicitation came out. We made an update this morning, and are working on additional response and actions focused on the eligibility change. Please sign and share the letter if you can! And add an email for updates. bsky.app/profile/jaso...

This was (horrible) news to me. Took a few minutes to sign - you should too!

🚨 Microbiologists! We are recruiting Assistant / Associate Professors in 3 collaborative areas of our U. Pittsburgh School of Medicine. 1) MMG (my dept): fundamental research in med micro 2) Peds ID / I4Kids institute 3) Center for Vaccine Research 🔗 to all 3 w/info: www.linkedin.com/posts/vaughn...

Any academic folks on H1B visas (even with stamps in passports) please get legal advice from your University attorneys before leaving the US.

“This isn’t just about 211 missing R01 grants. This is about the 211 PIs (or multi-PI groups) that are not getting a new grant. This is about at least 422-844 non-PI level investigators who are not having their salaries covered.”

Just heard from someone who had a 1% grant not funded through NIMH. Why? Perhaps no payline for 2026? 2025 all full up? Unclear. But totally bonkers and indicative of the complete gutting of the NIH/NIMH senior and grants processing peeps. The ones who remain are working so hard.

🧪 And House appropriators say: no cuts to NIH budget! House subcommittee version just came out (link below). Holds NIH flat at $48 billion. To be clear: this is far from over. But a good sign that science still matters across both sides of aisle. YOUR VOICE MATTERS!!

This is an important read for those universities whose leadership is increasingly from a business background and are pushing for “optimization”. Article is here: academic.oup.com/spp/advance-...

My forever meme.

"Pediatric Brain Cancer Trial Group to Be Phased Out" "A network of hospitals and cancer centers dedicated to early phase trials of novel treatments will no longer receive federal funding." 🎁🔗 Nina Agrawal for @nytimes.com

Now online! Transient gene melting governs the timing of oligodendrocyte maturation

SCOTUS decision "in a scientific sense...a total loss" "Years long studies will lose validity...Lifesaving medication trials will be abandoned. Countless researchers will lose their jobs.”https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02721-5

Aria Huang's @azyhuang.bsky.social paper is out on beautiful embryonic kidney 3D cultures that branch properly and enable live defect analysis. She also finds intriguing effects of adhesion and stiffness on explant size, shape, and nephron formation - boundary conditions matter! rdcu.be/eBSUK

New special issue from Journal of Experimental Biology This issue considers the functional roles of the #gut, from the #cellular level to its interactions with other #organs and tissues, including its role in #ecophysiological and #biogeochemical processes. journals.biologists.com/jeb/issue/22...

People weren’t healthier “back in the day.” In 1960s, life expectancy was in the 60s vs. 79 today. Testicular cancer? 95% fatal. Today? 95% survivable. Same with MANY cancers. Infections. Vaccine-preventable illness. We live longer & healthier lives today bc of science. youtu.be/rDx7LrBiMH0?...

5. It has been centuries since any one human could know everything that is known; understand everything that is understood. This is a remarkable power of science. We delegate trust and authority to experts as internally established in ways that are remarkably resilient to mistakes and malfeasance.

These are the most challenging times for early-career scientists and engineers. My team is doing its bit to help by maintaining and even expanding our database of funding opportunities for early-career researchers. We found 437 of them. Download it freely here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

For years, we searched for factors which are dysregulated in cancer and regulate development. We now describe elusive roles of DVL, a protein co-opted in #cancer and mutated in congenital disorders thanks to lab members & support from @unclineberger.bsky.social & @unc-phco.bsky.social rdcu.be/ewwsZ

Requests that were previously submitted via the prior approval module will not be reviewed, and recipients will need to initiate the first no cost extension within the Status module by using the Extension action

The updated version of the database of PhD fellowships produced and maintained by my team can be downloaded by anyone here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-... For each of the 187 fellowships, you will find a short description, deadline, $ amount, link, etc. Good luck!

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.

…starting to see tariff charges come through on ordering reagents for the lab. Not a great feeling 😑

Senate committee endorses NIH budget increase, rebuking Trump administration’s proposed 40% cut www.statnews.com/2025/07/31/n...

NIH wants to hear from you. No really. Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

100% this. Is it even possible to run a journal on an exclusively OA model with APCs under about $2-2.5k?

I was thinking about this too as I'm a standing member at NIH and review did the DoD. The amount of time and effort for no monetary benefit that is expected of us is unreasonable even at a 10th percentile funding rate. But at 4%.... what are we even asking of scientists?

One doesn’t even need an altruistic or idealistic view of science to believe that gutting scientific research is a bad idea. Nations invest in basic research because innovation fuels modern economies and global leadership. And it costs pennies compared to more frivolous govt spending

few outcomes, except for 99% of FDA-approved drugs, 174 recipients of 104 Nobel Prizes, training ~30K MDs and ~10K PhDs per year to enter the workforce, and a 34% reduction in age-adjusted cancer deaths since 1990 -- the largest decrease in history

The NIH was healthiest when pay lines were in the 20th percentile range. We are headed into an environment where pay lines are in the 5% range. In my entire career, I’ve only had 3 grants that scored better than 5%. And my lab is considered a successful one. This is going to destroy science.

I doubt that there is a single family in America that hasn’t benefitted directly from the NIH.

If you are an "FFPE expert", could I ask you a few questions? Let me know and I'll DM you 😊 Please RT

expect a 50 to 75% cut in all institute paylines (already tight — NCI’s was 9%) — meaning 50 to 75% of labs that were competitively funded on merit go dark and shut down

BRENNAN: Are you going to release the cancer research funding? RUSS VOUGHT: We're gonna continue to go through the same process that we have gone through with regard to the Dept of Education & we will release that funding when we are done BRENNAN: The WH budget does call for a $18b cut to NIH

TAPPER: 14 Republicans say you're risking undermining critical research by holding up NIH funding VOUGHT: If they were a company, their stock price would in shambles. They in some respects caused the pandemic. You have an entire institute that does nothing more than DEI research at the NIH.

In light of today’s news about the National Cancer Institute announcing a 4% payline, it’s really important to communicate to people that the previous 10% payline was still effectively a lottery and the result of decades of underfunding the NIH. Paylines used to be 25%.

This is a(nother) disaster for science in the US

No better time to call or email your members of Congress. Next year’s NIH budget is being debated in the Senate. A new nonpartisan campaign is making it easy to defend science and protect America’s innovation. Just follow this link to contact your representatives: www.protectscienceandinnovation.org

My Friday afternoon hot take is that open access is well-intentioned but an enormous waste of $. Research articles aren’t written for general understanding. The $1000s spent on OA APCs could probably hire a science writer (or AI model) to draft a short lay summary.

Can’t wait to read this one!

Does anyone have an example of a successful F31 under the new format?

Grant terminations have grabbed the headlines and have seen legal action, but even more damaging to the US research enterprise has been the massive decrease in number of research grants issued by federal agencies NIH has seen a decrease of 57% in the number of awards & 63% in value compared to FY24

what if i'm not good enough to have imposter syndrome