We are proud to be a part of this coalition suing to stop the Trump administration from stripping federal contracts from colleges & universities over their diversity, equity & inclusion efforts.
We shouldn’t be here, but here we are.
The number of NIH competitive awards is down 50% from 2025, and down ~70% from prior years. Even if they catch up by the end of the year, only wealthy institutions can bridge these huge funding gaps.They're killing science-and violating the constitution-by weaponizing the bureaucracy
The acting head of the CDC has canceled the publication of a study that found that the Covid vaccine sharply cut the odds of hospitalizations and emergency visits last winter
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/u...
Superb list of new Fellows. Very excited to see colleague Ela Pertea there. Also very glad to see Gonzalo Navarro recognized; a wise move by ISCB recognizing how computer science theory (pattern matching, text indexing) has supercharged progress in genomics and pangenomics. Congrats, Fellows!
Excited to be inducted as Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering! Advocacy for the #medical and #biological #engineering #sciences is more important now than ever. Thank you #AIMBE! 🧬 🧪 🖥️ @aimbe-official.bsky.social
www.bme.jhu.edu/news-events/...
In August, Jay Bhattacharya said “Training future biomedical scientists” was the 1st priority for his version of NIH.
But talk is cheap. Let’s see how JB’s doing. 🤔
NIH supports trainees mostly via fellowship (F), training (T), and career development (K) awards.
Here are funding curves for each.🧵
It's a very happy day indeed when I can welcome such a superb scientist and good friend to the JHU family. Adam & @mikeschatz.bsky.social were TAs for the first genomics course I took, taught by @stevensalzberg.bsky.social, and they've been role models since. JHU students: take Adam's courses!
Friday was my last day at NHGRI. After 10 wonderful years, my lab is headed to Johns Hopkins University
genomeinformatics.github.io/movingday/
This program transformed my career! Please apply.
@hhmi-science.bsky.social's #FreemanHrabowski Scholars Program offers early career faculty up to $10M over 10 yrs, plus salary & benefits. Postdoc? This year's competition has a program for you too. Applications open 11/3! bit.ly/4vhC0LA
Katalin Karikó will be @jhu.edu's 2026 commencement speaker. Excellent choice!
www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2026...
The civilization that would die if such threats were carried out is our own.
For almost a century generations of scholars and thinkers have tried to understand why the Germans sleepwalked into disaster. Future generations will focus on a different case.
The administration's budget request would cut research funding for the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency by more than 50%.
It's hard to imagine an external enemy causing more long-term damage to this country.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Same to you, Rob!
A run-length-compressed skiplist data structure for dynamic GBWTs supports time and space efficient pangenome operations over syncmers
doi.org/10.64898/202...
While the situation is grim at NIH, it's closer to catastrophic at NSF. They're just not able to move any money out the door. It appears OMB has them on lockdown. www.science.org/content/arti....
𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗵𝗗 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀 / 𝗔𝗹𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗕𝗶𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀
I am currently recruiting for both:
🔹 Postdoc position
su.varbi.com/what:job/job...
🔹 PhD position
su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
Please share with anyone who might be interested!
Congratulations! Vikram Shivakumar successfully defended his dissertation “Scalable Sequence Analysis Using Compressed Pangenome Indexing” under the guidance of advisor Ben Langmead. Vikram plans to pursue a joint postdoctoral fellowship at the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and the University of Cambridge. We in the department are extremely proud of our students who have successfully completed their PhD. Congratulations on this achievement and best wishes as you begin an exciting new phase of life!
Congratulations, @vikramshivakumar.bsky.social!
Amazing opportunity. Best of luck, Gamze! Perhaps I'll see you at Genome Informatics in December?
Here is the "effective payline" for each institute, estimated (by Claude) as the percentile where one can expect 80% probability of funding from a logistic regression fit. The effective payline has gone from a historic ~12% to 6% in 2025.
Very nice post, and this is very lovely work
They won’t stop until the National Institutes of Health is a hollowed out RFK Jr. echo chamber and revenue generation machine for snake oil peddlers.
Moderna is at least the ninth company to have received a surprise rejection from Vinay Prasad and his team.
If you were online last weekend, you probably caught some clips from Jon Ossoff’s speech. It’s worth watching the whole thing because it’s an object lesson in how Democrats should communicate in the upcoming midterms. messagebox.substack.com/p/a-speech-e...
The flu and pneumonia kill over 45,000 people a year. Moderna developed a new mRNA flu vaccine for people 50 and older--who are most at risk. Prasad, unilaterally, against the recommendation of experts within the agency, denied Moderna's appplication. www.statnews.com/2026/02/11/m...
Freeman Hrabowski III, the President Emeritus from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, giving a TED talk.
This is a powerful message from Freeman Hrabowski.
🧵
1/12
Reminder that the abstract deadline for the Biology of Genomes meeting at CSHL is on Feb 13! We have a fantastic lineup of keynote speakers (Janet Kelso and Jonathan Pritchard) and session chairs. Submit your best science to this exciting and engaged meeting!
meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.asp...
Super thread, thank you Ragnar. I told my lab I would explain suffixient sets in a meeting this week and I'm going to start by just walking through your thread 🙏