Melina A. Agosto

Call for 20 Assistant Professor positions Karolinska Institutet is a world-leading medical university with a long and proud history of ground-breaking research. We are now recruiting outstanding early-career researchers with particularly exce...

Karolinska is looking for 20 (!!) assistant professors and offering 6 year appointments with ~1M USD startup packages.

ki.se/en/about-ki/...

New tenure track assistant professor position in molecular microbiology in our department @dmf-unil.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social! We are casting a wide net for an experimental molecular microbiologist. Apply here: wwwfbm.unil.ch/releve/appli...

A graph showing NIH funding for new and competitive renewal grants for FY2024 and FY2025 showing a much lower rate of investment for FY2025.

I updated my funding curves last night.

Here are the results for new and competitive renewal grants.

The rate of investment has dropped substantially. This is apparently due to a requirement for DOGE review.

I am calling this effect the "Downward DOGE"

1/2

Funding freeze at Northwestern from Emma Mairson at
grant-watch.us. Data from USAspending. Normally, ~$70 M per month. Now, bupkis.

Northwestern is keeping research moving and must be spending ~$40 M per month. Clearly not sustainable for too long.

Quote from MIT President Sally Kornbluth's commencement address: "We believe in the beauty and power of fundamental scientific discovery - that incredibly intricate, maddening, heroic, intoxicating process of exploration and testing that somehow got stuck with the bland label 'basic research.'"

Posted by @mit.edu on another platform

Wonder doesn’t flinch. It’s our compass pulling us toward curiosity, creativity It reminds us: #science & #discovery are good. Here’s a moment that stirred mine: a new PI(3,4)P₂ probe illuminating the cell membrane & endosomes. Marvel with me. Captured on #FluorescenceFriday for #MicroscopyMonday

Retinal ON-bipolar cell expressing mEmerald-Sec61 (blue), and labeled with mGluR6 antibody (red).

An elegant ON bipolar cell expressing ER marker mEmerald-Sec61 🟦 and co-stained with mGluR6 antibody 🟥. #FluorescenceFriday More info in this old paper: www.eneuro.org/content/5/3/...

Have you ever seen the black box that is the inside of a microscope objective? Today Dr. Stephen Ross of Nikon gave a fascinating lecture on what goes into the design and manufacturing of an objective.

Eating lunch with some of my students

Lab lunch 😀

Assistant Professor (tenure track) – Chromatin, Epigenetics - Vancouver, British Columbia (CA) job with The University of British Columbia (UBC) | 12837841 Assistant Professor (tenure track) - Chromatin Regulation, Genetic Regulatory Mechanisms, Epigenetics, Epigenomics

www.nature.com/naturecareer... UBC LSI Job!!

FACULTY JOB ALERT! The Albert Einstein Dept of Neuroscience is hiring a new assistant professor in any area of neuroscience! We have funds specifically earmarked for this search. #Neuroscience #AcademicJobs #NeuroSky Job just posted: faculty-einstein.icims.com/jobs/17175/f... Please share widely!!

PIs and trainees in the US need to be supported now more than ever, not vilified. They are being targeted, and their work and livelihood are in jeopardy.

as I tell my Genetics class every year, this breakthrough is based on 70 years of NIH-funded, basic research, commercialized by biotech
bsky.app/profile/need...

Graph between 1/20 and 2/28 of fiscal year 2024 and 2025 new awards in the EDU directorate.

🧪🚨 NSF's Directorate for STEM Education (EDU) has halted making nearly all new awards since inauguration day.

Among *many* other things, EDU runs the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP).

We need to protect the education & training of the next gen of scientists #StandUpForScience

Thread👇🧵

An excellent opportunity! And I'm not just saying that because I'll be teaching an imaging and comparative retinal anatomy workshop during this course 😁 👀

Financial aid is available!

Thank you!

Photo of a sunset from the kitchen window in the retina lab at Dalhousie.

Submitted a new CIHR grant today. I don't suppose it will be funded, but I'm grateful to at least have a functional federal agency to submit it to. Also - sunset in the retina lab kitchen:

Welcome to Halifax! I moved here from Houston a few years ago.

Extending my grant update this morning. Here are data limited to new and competitive renewal applications.

The Pause is dead, Long live the Pause...

a man in a red suit and tie is holding a piece of paper that says breaking news on it ALT: a man in a red suit and tie is holding a piece of paper that says breaking news on it

Some good-ish news from NIH

“Federal Register notices for study sections run by CSR (but not those by ICs) will start being permitted again”

As far as I know, the timing for this is not clear, but I will be checking the Federal Register.

Critics say Trump’s executive orders to reshape the NIH ‘will kill’ Americans Executive orders’ impact on premier medical research agency has resulted in delayed projects and frozen funding

Guardian article on NIH

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

List of canceled meetings last week: Neurotechnology and Vision H Lung Immunology and Infection Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award A Therapeutic Development and Preclinical Studies Neurobiology of Pain and Itch Molecular and Cellular Neuropharmacology Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation Sciences Topics in Health Services Research: Big Data, Health Information Technology, and Clinical Informatics D Advancing Therapeutics K Bacterial Virulence Kidney Endocrine and Digestive Disorders Basic Mechanisms of Cancer Health Disparities Learning, Memory and Decision Neuroscience Molecular Neurogenetics Skeletal Biology Development and Disease Clinical Neurodegeneration Translational Neuroscience Nutrition and Metabolism in Health and Disease Collaborative Applications: Clinical Studies of Mental Illness S Aging Systems and Geriatrics Biodata Management and Analysis Brain Injury and Neurovascular Disorders Clinical Data Management and Analysis Clinical Neuroplasticity and Neurotransmitters Chemical Synthesis and Biosynthesis Emerging Imaging Technologies and Applications Hemostasis, Thrombosis, Blood Cells and Transfusion Molecular Cancer Diagnosis and Classification Mechanisms of Cancer Therapeutics B Prokaryotic Cell and Molecular Biology Pulmonary Vascular Disease and Physiology Reproductive, Perinatal and Pediatric Health Therapeutic Immune Regulation Immune Mechanisms of Hypersensitivity and Allergy (IMHA) B Adult Lifespan Psychopathology Advancing Therapeutics - B Clinical Integrative Cardiovascular and Hematological Sciences Interventions to Prevent and Treat Addictions Psychosocial Risk and Interpersonal Processes of Health L Addiction Risks and Mechanisms Chemical Biology and Probes Tumor Evolution, Heterogeneity and Metastasis Societal and Ethical Issues

Study sections scheduled for this past week that were canceled:

We all owe @jeremymberg.bsky.social a debt of gratitude for his work in clarifying, connecting, and advocating for science in this chaotic time.

🙏🏼

NEW: NSF confirmed that they fired 168 employees today, out of their staff of ~1,500 feds.

This includes some people who'd finished their 1-year probationary periods, which were extended to 2-years last month without explanation. More to come.

‘Wrecking ball’: RFK Jr. moves to fire thousands of health agency employees Supervisors deliver bad news across NIH, CDC

President Donald Trump’s administration today moved to fire 5200 workers at the Department of Health and Human Services, using supervisors across the vast agency to warn probationary employees that they would soon receive termination notices. scim.ag/4jYmcYA

The damage today (actually yesterday) to the intramural program appears to especially bad.

It also appears (although I need more confirmation) that most or all of the tenure track investigators in their first 2 years in several, and perhaps all, institutes were terminated.

7/n

And it can time travel too, in a way... (assuming that was a TARDIS reference)

I have an open position for a postdoc to study neurodevelopmental disorders in the retina using two-photon imaging and electrophysiology!

Tenure track position in comparative physiology – University of Ottawa – Canadian Association for Neuroscience The Department of Biology at the University of Ottawa invites applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor. The successful candidate will demonstrate the potential to…

New job ad posted: Tenure track position in comparative physiology – Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa https://buff.ly/40RUCn4 #neurojobs