Maya Emmons-Bell

Gently wondering if it might be possible to nurture a professional culture that doesn’t require its newest members to crowdsource survival tactics..

The benefits of continuity and a case for bridge funding abundance Recent multi-pronged efforts to limit the autonomy, financial solvency, and influence of American universities have included federal funding cuts impacting research programs across disciplines.

University bridge funding policy is wonky and little-discussed but is going to have such a massive impact on the direction of research and size and composition of the scientific workforce. I wrote a little about it - tl;dr if you're an academic you should get curious about your institution's policy!

yes 💯 -- i want a breakdown of how many of those fs and k99s are diversity/mosaic awards.. im guessing most 😔

Sen. Ossoff: Who out there in the American public is sitting at home demanding that we shut down cancer research and Alzheimer's research?

Funding uncertainty will inevitably push low-income and marginalized students towards financially stable opportunities. I’m not sure I would’ve pursued a career in research if I was starting now as opposed to ten years ago. We need to double down on our efforts to support diverse young scientists.

There are lots of ways for individuals and institutions to step in and support here - everything from filing formal appeals to offering bridge funding to organizing happy hours. Do what you can as often as you can!

Each of those F31 awards represents months (sometimes years!) of work collecting preliminary data and preparing an application. It seems especially cruel to pull the rug out from under young scientists, just as they are deciding what to do after graduation.

a bar plot showing that a greater percentage of F31 awards have been cancelled as compared to R01 awards.

But there's a catch - if you normalize these data to the total number of R01s and F31s awarded in 2023, the story changes: a greater *percentage* of the trainee awards have been cancelled as compared to non-trainee awards.

bar plot showing the distribution of cancelled grants across NIH activity codes.

At first glance, it looks like most terminated grants from the NIH are R01s, which are awarded to established scientists to fund the work of their labs. The next most common grant category is the F31, a training grant supporting the professional development of outstanding graduate students.

Thanks to the excellent work of @scott-delaney.bsky.social and @noamross.net , we can explore the disproportionate burden trainees are experiencing re: cancelled grants.

Grant cancellations of any kind are terrible and disruptive, but I've been thinking a lot about the compounding effects that cancelling trainee grants will have - so many promising young people left discouraged and (rightfully) contemplating careers outside of science.

did they receive any info on the fate of those applications? my mosaic k99 was in that section ❤️‍🩹

Interested in chromatin dynamics, mechanics, or mechanotransduction? Come hear the latest from team member Ivan Surovtsev who discusses how forces are propagated down the chromosome TOMORROW at 2 pm (Saturday Dec. 14th) in the Polymer Concepts in Cellular Function session in Room 28C. #cellbio2024

If you love the nuclear pore complex (or just beautiful images), don't miss the flash talk from our own Kimberly Morgan at #cellbio2024 on SUNDAY in the Microsymposium on Visualizing Biological Complexity at 10:15am in Room 33B - poster to follow. Pan-Expansion Microscopy is amazing!