Andrew Westbrook

Working on a NIH multiyear funding tracker...

This looks at the amount of multiyear funding (grants having a budget period 366 days or longer) for new and competitive renewal awards divided by the total amount of new and competitive renewal award funding over the same period.

1/5

I have literally watched something like 5 hours of this DOGE bro testimony. I'm completely obsessed, it's weirdly captivating. The circular arguments, the disdain from everyone involved, a true pleasure to watch

Follow 404 Media on Instagram (www.instagram.com/404mediaco/) for more like this

Rutgers scientists and academics! Come out to meet-and-greet with me at Destination Dogs, New Brunswick.

Who can say no to Destination Dogs? There will be food and drink! Wednesday March 11, 5-7pm

RSVP: forms.gle/6AykuoTq23XW...
(truthfully just show up...but RSVP helps us choose how many dogs!)

Why does cheating matter? A personal anecdote and an appeal to junior colleagues.

got inspired by some questions from phd students the other day — and also really irritated by senior academics who seem to refuse to get the issues and continue to blame students; hope useful for you! 🩷

olivia.science/cheating

@standupforscience.bsky.social
www.youtube.com/live/DEagenL...
Live stream of the DC rally!!

Given this here - Stand Up for Science!!

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers.

The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

Private money cannot replace public funding of science Who should pay for American science? In the current political climate, many are looking to the private sector to compensate for cuts in public funding. At the Harvard School of Public Health—particula...

"Private money cannot replace public funding of science"
Thank you @naomioreskes.bsky.social
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🧪 🌊 ⚒️ #scipol

If you know anyone that has made a similar experience and is willing to talk on the record to a reporter about this, please get in touch. Thanks :)

Please stop saying the bill allows "no more multi-year funding" - or at least be clear the 'more' is in reference to disastrous FY25 levels.

The bill allows 39% MYF, same as in FY25, which contributed substantially to a 24% drop in new research.

The bill has some wins. MYF is not one of them.

News from central Jersey: I'm running to represent New Jersey's 12th Congressional District.

By entering the fray, I hope to bring ideas of repairing our frayed republic. Not only to defend it in 2026, but to build something stronger, for generations to come!

samwang.substack.com/p/entering-t...

The final LHHS bill with funding for Health and Human Services is out this morning! At first glance, it looks similar to the Senate bill with a roughly 1% increase in total funding for the NIH. While it doesn't match inflation, it avoids many of the problems in the presidential budget request. 1/n

A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the invention of smartphones and the advent of social media, which both appeared around the same year, 2008.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Associate Professor - Madison, Wisconsin, United States Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...

New job opening in social psychology at UW-Madison! at the associate prof level.
jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/associa...

We are hiring an assistant professor in cognitive neural systems in the department of psychology at the university of arizona. please use this link to check out the requirements and apply!

arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Another nail in the coffin for PCA?

- doesn’t linearize, distorting similarity metrics
- is biased by temporal jitter across epochs
- may miss important dimensions for transient amplification

If you think there is a state space, use a state space model!

Day Zero arrives for Tehran, a city of TEN million people.

Why is cognitive effort experienced as costly? A widespread observation is that people avoid mentally effortful courses of action, and much recent work examining cognitive effort has explained subjective effort evaluation – and, consequently, pref...

New pontification piece with @awestbrook.bsky.social and Jean Daunizeau, just out in TICS:
Why is cognitive effort experienced as costly?
(or why does it hurt to think)

never written a review paper before in my life, that was a new and unusual experience

A habit and working memory model as an alternative account of human reward-based learning Nature Human Behaviour - In this study, Collins proposes an alternative dual-process (working memory and habit) model of reinforcement learning in humans.

My paper is out!
Computational modeling of error patterns during reward-based learning show evidence that habit learning (value free!) supplements working memory in 7 human data sets.
rdcu.be/eQjLN

🚨Please join us today (Monday 11/17) at 4pm in Room 4 to #AskAnything to Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Neuroscience @sfnjournals.bsky.social Dr. Sabine Kastner about scientific publishing and our board! Early career researchers are especially welcome! @sfn.org
#Sfn2025 #SfN25

🎉 Dr. Linden Parkes, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at @rwjms.bsky.social and Core Faculty Member of the Rutgers Brain Health Institute, has been named one of The Transmitter’s Rising Stars of Neuroscience 2025! @thetransmitter.bsky.social
www.thetransmitter.org/early-career...

What does brain criticality have to do with cognitive effort and cognitive flexibility? Come check out work by Dr. Li Xin Lim - postdoc in the lab - on Monday from 8 to 12 at (Board OO6) to find out. Here we come #SfN2025!

a man with a beard is looking at the camera with the words priorities written on the bottom ALT: a man with a beard is looking at the camera with the words priorities written on the bottom

Another new policy from the geniuses in NIH leadership.

Apparently, ~70% of grant applications for most mechanisms will not be "triaged", i.e. not discussed at study section.

This is an increase from the ~50% level that has been in place for many years.

I don't know the rationale for this

1/13

Come check out my SFN nano talk @ 4:15 on Sunday, especially if you’re interested in:

- spicy debates in task switching
- using control theory to compare latent dynamical systems fit to RNNs and EEG

eppro02.ativ.me/appinfo.php?...

Stay for the whole ‘Adaptive Choice’ symposium!

Going to SfN this year? Come share your science journey with
@investnscience.bsky.social — from the questions that drive your work to the breakthroughs that inspire you. We are a group of scientists highlighting how science benefits everyone.

DM me to sign up or with any questions!

Don’t you hate when you buy something from a vending machine and it gets stuck? Dopamine tells your brain that the outcome wasn’t what you expected. You've probably heard about dopamine as the "feel-good hormone", but it does so much more!

Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…

This piece is as good as people say it is. Read it to appreciate that writing isn't just about content, but style. AI can't do this.

The CDC just confirmed what pediatricians have been dreading: Measles is surging across America. A disease we eliminated in 2000 is back because vaccination rates have fallen below the threshold… | C... The CDC just confirmed what pediatricians have been dreading: Measles is surging across America. A disease we eliminated in 2000 is back because vaccination rates have fallen below the threshold that...

#MeaslesIsADangerousVirus

www.linkedin.com/posts/christ...

How does drinking alcohol shape the aging brain? @neuronikki.bsky.social studies how heavy drinking impacts neurons as we age.

Research has shown that alcohol use disorder (AUD) in middle age increases the risk for developing Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia - but how?

I am recruiting a postdoc for a new NIMH-funded R01 using neural and behavioral models to understand anxious avoidance. Please share with anyone who may be interested!

Link: faculty-emory.icims.com/jobs/155929/...