From MBoC… Cells move cargo in clever ways. John Salogiannis (University of Vermont) reveals how the protein AcbdA helps peroxisomes hitchhike on early endosomes—connecting intracellular transport with fatty acid metabolism. www.molbiolcell.org/doi/full/10....
Candid photo of Zara Weinberg. She has short red hair, bangs and glasses. She is laughing.
The Leading Edge Fellows gathered this week to celebrate Zara Weinberg, a beloved member of our community. Our 7th cohort of Leading Edge Fellows (2026) will be named in her honor.
The Zara Weinberg Leading Edge Cohort application is now open! Due Feb 2.
www.leadingedgesymposium.org/apply/
Zara Weinberg passed away earlier this week. She joined my lab earlier this year when her postdoc lab formally closed.
She was a brilliant scientist, supportive mentor, dear friend, avid music fan, rabid believer in public transit, open science champion, and above all just an amazing human.
super cool!!
🚨 SCOTUS just issued a decision in the NIH grant termination cases. And it's awful.
In plain English, the likely result of this is that SCOTUS just re-terminated ~900 NIH grants worth over $1.9 billion in unspent funds
This is an atrocious decision by Justice Barrett & the right wing of the Court.
Retweet to save a life
From left to right, Dr. Albert Mulenga, William Tae Heung Kim, Dr. Thu Thuy Nguyen, Dr. Alex Kiarie Gaithuma, Dr Hassan Hakimi and Emily Bencosme Cuevas. Kim is a Texas A&M researcher who was detained in San Francisco last Monday despite being a permanent resident of the United States and a green card holder. COURTESY OF TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
I NEED to tell you the story of Tae Heung “William” Kim.
He's a graduate student at Texas A&M where he's working on a vaccine for Lyme disease.
He's a *legal permanent resident* of the United States.
And he's been in ICE detention for 12 days & counting, transferred Tuesday to South Texas.
As stressful as it is to run a laboratory in the US right now, my thoughts are often with the NIH staff living in the awful chaos trying to preserve the whole enterprise. I’m grateful for every moment they choose not to give up. These people are the only thing keeping it from entirely collapsing.
My second NCR was awarded, one day early.
NIH staff must be working around the clock to push funding out.
Let's thank our POs and SROs and all NIH staff for working selflessly to keep science progressing in this sh*tshow.
Jenna Christensen, molecular biologist and Missouri native, writes: “The message that this sends to young people is clear – science is not a stable career.” Cuts to federal research risk losing the next generation of scientists.🧪🏠
@christensenlab.bsky.social
www.mycouriertribune.com/cuts-to-scie...
This perspective highlights why federal research opportunities (e.g. NSF REU internships, NSF GRFP fellowships and grant-supported technician positions) were fundamental for me to advance in the academic research ranks. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to become a scientist
#saveNSF
Every academic has an angel on one shoulder saying "wow this is a brilliant proposal" and a devil on the other saying "yea, no this is crap".
The devil likes to be particularly loud...
This is exactly what I was describing yesterday. So much very questionable verbal guidance.
If you get a verbal order that you believe is illegal or unethical, don’t act on it.
Instead, summarize it by email back to the person who spoke it to you and ask for confirmation.
Jay, please stop gaslighting early career researchers.
Today I’m leading 152 House Democrats in challenging Trump's devastating cuts to life-saving NIH research grants. Congress—not Trump—controls federal spending.
Trump must do his job, “faithfully execute” the laws and stop violating the Constitution to undercut public health.
BREAKING: A federal judge in Massachusetts (the Reagan-appointed William Young) has declared the Trump administration's cuts to NIH grants — ostensibly over Trump's EOs on gender ideology and DEI — are "illegal" and "void." He's ordering many grants restored.
The Trump administration’s freezing in April of $790 million in federal research funding for Northwestern University has left concerned lab directors without key grant money from the National Institutes of Health.
Proud to be a signatory on this letter in support of the courageous staff at the NIH who penned the Bethesda Declaration to decry the ongoing politicization and damage to the US biomedical research infrastructure which has been the envy of the world.
How is this supposed to happen when institutional training grants are being terminated and delayed, fewer individual fellowships are being funded and the directorate that funds STEM education is being dismantled?
It is so disappointing to see this doublespeak from scientific leaders
If you burn down a forest, you don't miss out on lumber for just that season. You have to replant all the trees, nurture them, and wait for them to grow.
The science and research budget cuts happening now are wanton, senseless arson. Recovery, if it ever happens, will take generations.
My mom, who was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2000, passed away Friday at the age of 93. She took a chemo regimen called R-CHOP, which allowed her to celebrate 5 more birthdays and hold her great-grandchild. Thank you to scientists giving us those extra years with her. #ThanksNIH
Person using lawnmower with a Twister bearing down upon his yard
Principal Investigator submitting grant proposals for federal funding
Circa June 2025
HMMER is crucial to our modern understanding of protein biochemistry and has almost certainly generated at least a 10-fold return on investment for every dollar the US government has spent on funding it.
I’ve seen some academic presentations over the last few weeks that I was surprised to find myself genuinely moved by. I don’t know, there’s something beautiful about people thinking hard and honestly about things they care about, and trying to explain why, in a world that manifestly DGAF.
All of NIH funding to Northwestern University is frozen. This pause includes noncompeting approved funding, new and competing grants with fundable scores. No reimbursements for money already spent have been received since March. This situation is rarely reported so please Please get the word out!
BTW. If you’re a scientist and are feeling hollowed out, depressed, fried, frustrated, confused, and simply exhausted by everything, I understand you. You are perfectly sane and you are not alone.
I am late to this but @lastweektonight.com is doing better journalism on the Trump-induced crisis in American public health than most other "real" mainstream media outlets. Watch it, all of it. #RFKMustGo. youtu.be/8H34jcpEsFs?...
"If NIH budget money, designated by Congress to be spent on medical cures, doesn’t go out over the next few months, all US scientists are looking at budget cuts that will not just take away cures but harm local economies." donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nih-bu...
