Emily Perkins, PhD

me: starfish

Scientist: not a fish

me: jellyfish

Scientist: not a fish

me: seahorse

Scientist: fish

SCIENCE IRL: SciComm mini-grant 2026 Skype a Scientist is offering $300-$1,000 mini-grants to support boots-on-the-ground science communication. The Science IRL mini-grants will support projects that put either 1) important science mess...

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Attention science communicators!
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The 2026 Science IRL mini-grant application is NOW OPEN!

Submit your creative ideas for connecting people with actionable science information *offline*.

The deadline for this round of grants is March 23, 2026.

Apply here!
forms.gle/4emvpRPddmEt...

Hierarchical Phenotyping of Psychopathology: Implications and Opportunities for Precision Psychiatry When Biology Could Be Associated With Both Symptoms and Syndromes As psychiatry increasingly embraces precision medicine principles, there have been efforts to characterize the specificity of biology-psychopathology associations (e.g., is biology associated with syn...

Excited for the 1st lab paper to be live @biologicalpsych.bsky.social !

@emilyrperkins.bsky.social @keananjoyner.bsky.social and I discuss testing biology as simultaneous + unique predictors of different levels of psychopathology hierarchies 1/7🧵

www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S000...

BIG FIGHT AT POLAND’S WROCLAW ZOO!!!

pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.

Hell yeah! Love this

This is AMAZING. Will there be photo documentation, by any chance? My family is very excited about seeing someone from their dirtbag rep’s office receiving the ducks

FORTUNATELY, for everyone we have a fun way to tell your House rep that you think Bobby Jr is a quack and has to go…

For $3 we will hand deliver (by a man in a duck costume) a rubber ducky with a message to “impeach the quack” to your rep!

QUACK-O-GRAMS!

act.standupforscience.net/fundraising/...

A graphic of large Rubber ducks invading Washington DC that’s says “send your hour representative a message: impeach and remove the quack. $3 = 1 rubber ducky hand-delivered to your rep by a man in a duck costume” stand up for science.

Yep!

I will be interviewing for a clinical psychology PhD student in the Precision Psychopathology + Dynamic Immunopsychiatry Lab this interview cycle.

Please see our website for more info about what we do + share with applicants you think might be a good fit.

share.google/uJRyS3NY9Kdo...

The result—an increase of executive power at the expense of legislative authority-does not stand alone. Just last week, this Court granted another stay allowing the President to ignore a federal statute. That decision permitted the President to push forward in dismantling the Department of Education, even though Congress created that agency and tasked it with performing vital functions. See McMahon v. New York, 606 U.S. (2025) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 1). If the majority had any valid basis for taking that action (relating, say, to the breadth of the District Court's preliminary injunction) it did not appear on the face of the Court's unreasoned or-der. See id., at _ (order) (slip op., at 1); id., at (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 18). That order simply signaled that the President could carry on, even in the face of a conflicting statute. So too does this order, and with the same lack of care. The majority has acted on the emergency docket—with "little time, scant briefing, and no argument" —to override Congress's decisions about how to structure administrative agencies so that they can perform their prescribed duties. Wilcox, 605 U.S., at _ (KAGAN, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 5). By means of such actions, this Court may facilitate the permanent transfer of authority, piece by piece by piece, from one branch of Government to another. Respectfully, I dissent.

By a 6-3 vote, SCOTUS lets Trump fire the Dem members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, who are protected against removal by statute.

Dissenting, Kagan says the majority is undertaking a “permanent transfer of authority” from Congress to the president.
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

AAUP v. Rubio Reveals Details of Deportation Efforts Government officials described how they found the names of pro-Palestinian student and faculty activists and gave insights into the confidential memos that led to their arrests.

Government officials described how they found the names of pro-Palestinian student and faculty activists and gave insights into the confidential memos that led to their arrests. www.insidehighered.com/news/global/... #edusky

🚨WE WON OUR UNION 🚨

What a win! Congratulations, @rapup-uaw.bsky.social!

Fund SEPTA!
Philly doesn’t want your shady Uber bus.
It doesn’t want your Waymo death trap.
Fund the good old public transit! Literally for goodness sakes!

Harvard sociologist/polisci Theda Skocpol explains how the vast expansion of ICE in BBB may be Trump's secret weapon to overcome the barriers of federalism and complete his autocratic takeover of the American state. (History from Germany & Hungary in 20s/30s.) talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/criti...

Remember: If unions didn’t matter, powerful corporations wouldn’t spend millions of dollars every year to stop workers from organizing. Keep up the fight.

🚨 A new rule would let career scientists like NSF/NIH program officers be replaced by political appointees

Already 14,000+ public comments, deadline is Friday

📣 Comments can be short. Courts consider them—and scientists with NSF/NIH experience are especially impactful

Speak up! shorturl.at/WKuBj

Group photo of Sesame Street workers holding their firsts high with graphics showing the logo of their new union and the winning vote tally, 55-19

Sesame Street is officially UNION! Workers at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street, have voted 55-19 to join @opeiulocal153.bsky.social

Huge congrats to @sesameworkersunion.bsky.social! “We can officially say that today, May 15th, is brought to you by the letter U!”

I’m so sorry, Schotz. Having been your student before, I can say for sure that having you there and in charge must have made a terrible situation slightly more bearable for them. Your students were (and are) lucky to have you. I hope concrete political action comes of this. Sending hugs ❤️

I mask so I don’t get sick because being sick sucks! But more than that, it’s a way to protect and show solidarity with vulnerable/disabled people who have been forcibly displaced from society writ large by COVID (and continue to be). If we don’t value those people, we are truly lost.

New pre-print! Just submitted the R&R for this collab with @keananjoyner.bsky.social + @emilyrperkins.bsky.social on using techniques to test biology as predictors of multiple levels of psychopathology (e.g., syndrome + symptom) as a path forward for precision psychiatry

osf.io/preprints/ps...

NIH Again Tosses Grant Applications for Program That Funds Minority Researchers The agency, for the second time this year, has withdrawn applications for the F31 diversity fellowship, which is designed to “promote diversity in health-related research.”

If this sounds familiar, that's because it is: For the second time in as many months, the NIH withdrew applications to a grant program for doctoral students from underrepresented backgrounds. #HigherEd #AcademicSky #PhDSky

I was happy to #standupforscience2025 yesterday. And of course, I have been thinking about things I didn't have a chance to say.

Like because of the chaos at NIH (and the freezing of funding), how my team has been waiting for NOAs for two non-competing renewals since mid-January.

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Lindsay Fernandez is a cancer researcher. She’s afraid the cuts that the Trump Administration is making won’t just hurt us now, but will discourage researchers for years to come.

We need to listen to our researchers. It’s time to invest in science - not cut it. @higheredlabor.bsky.social

Federal Register hold makes ‘end run’ around court pause on NIH funding freeze NIH-related updates to the Federal Register, which are required for the scheduling of study sections and advisory councils, are on hold indefinitely, according to an email reviewed by <i>The Transmitt...

I just covered this for @thetransmitter.bsky.social — will keep following! www.thetransmitter.org/funding/fede...

Thanks, friend ❤️

The War on Science

New episode out! 🧪

The Trump administration has thrown the science world into chaos. We talk to @maxkozlov.bsky.social at @nature.com and Jocelyn Kaiser at @science.org about what's going on.

On Spotify or wherever you listen 👇

open.spotify.com/episode/56Co...

This whole thread is worth a read to understand better what’s happening to science. I got an email today saying that the study section for my K23, which was *scheduled for today,* is now indefinitely delayed. Countless jobs are at risk, in addition to those already lost (I see you, NIH friends).