Chris Wirth

Liquid cooling!! This is such a great complex fluids problem to work on.

Map of NSF Regional Innovation Engine Semifinalists with link

Interactive Map of NSF Regional Innovation Engine 2025 Semifinalists tableau.external.nsf.gov/views/NSFEng...

Tell the Department of Energy to Stop Attacking Civil Rights and Section 504 - DREDF Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund

DOE wants to eliminate regulations which require buildings receiving fed funding to be accessible to disabled people.

We need comments submitted by TOMORROW MONDAY 6/16

Pls help push back!

Instructions+template: dredf.org/action-alert...
More background: www.disabilityscoop.com/2025/06/09/e...

The most important words of our Constitution are the first three: We the People. We have no Kings here, no monarchs, no slaves and no subjects.

We the People.

Ardem Patapoutian's story is not just the American dream, it is the dream of American science. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1986 at age 18 after fleeing war-torn Lebanon. He spent a year writing for an Armenian newspaper and delivering Domino's at night to become eligible for the University of California, where he earned his undergraduate degree and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience. He started a lab at Scripps Research in San Diego with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, discovered the way humans sense touch, and in 2021 won the Nobel Prize. But with the Trump administration slashing spending on science, Dr. Patapoutian's federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain has been frozen. In late February, he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedical research and prompt an exodus of talent from the United States. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to "any city, any university I want," he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years.

Man comes to the US from Lebanon. Starts out delivering pizzas, becomes a Nobel winning neuroscientist. Trump freezes his funding, he gets an email from China offering to move his lab “any city, any university I want" with guaranteed funding for 20 years.

What are we doing?

Or buffalo

Samesy

Straining the bounds of propriety is when I gave a talk at an Ivy League med school wearing jeans and a polo.

This is extraordinary corruption.

'undertones'

Among the stream of shit over the last four months, the understones of this post from NSF brought me to near tears. This is so profoundly fucking sad.

In 2023 and 2024, I was on the steering committee of the ASEE NSF CAREER workshop. Unfortunately, this program is not offered this year. Therefore, four recent NSF CAREER Winners and I have decided to put together an informal Q&A to support future CAREER winners!

Sign up here: lnkd.in/evq4bYnv

Cancer research, long protected, feels ‘devastating’ effects under Trump Cancer research has had bipartisan support. But Trump administration budget cuts and delays threaten to reverse progress of recent years, experts say.

Cancer research, long protected, feels ‘devastating’ effects under Trump

www.statnews.com/2025/03/24/t... via

graph of NIH basisfor new drugs

A pie graph worth keeping in mind as the NIH budget plummets jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... for 356 new FDA drugs approved

Timeline cleanse: Bruges and Interfacial Science (Bubble Nucleation)

Timeline cleanse: Leuven

I've listened/read a lot by Mike Roth and really like his approach. Offering good thoughts here in this interview.

The downright lovely thing about trains and urbanism is that if my flight is delayed I'm stuck sleeping on the floor of IAH for the night, but when a train gets messed up I get rebooked for 2 hrs later, with partial refund, and get to hangout in the city while waiting.

Fuck this

Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars | Defector Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic ac...

This guy, @albertburneko.bsky.social, is a genius. Please read his brilliant article on Elon Musk's deranged and morally repugnant Mars colonisation schtick. defector.com/neither-elon...

you’re fired. wait you’re rehired. email us a list of things you’ve done today wait forget it you’re fired again. come back your job was important. you’re fired. or hired. come in to the office. wait the office has no computers go home. we are the department of government efficiency.

What do you mean here? Indirects should be determined by each university? Actual indirects are higher than what was typical before January. Happy to educate as needed.

What if we all just email them?

Don't sit in silence while history repeats itself.

On March 7th, join a #standupforscience2025 protest against political interference in science.

Rallies will take place in DC and capital cities across the US: standupforscience2025.org/local-event-...
🧪

Text that reads "When this essay was drafted, I never conceived of the precipitous damage that was possible by thoughtless policy changes — like last week’s retraction of federal support by mandating a cap on NIH’s reimbursement of facilities and administrative costs. This move would ravage research universities in a single stoke and would essentially throw in the towel on US leadership in science and technology. It may not be a question of research universities surviving another 25 years; all that we have been building could be undone in less than 25 days."

Final note from Bob Brown's "Will the American research university make it to its 100th birthday?" www.elsevier.com/connect/will...

In Memory of Andy Acrivos: CEMS Alum and Titan of Chemical Engineering Andreas (Andy) Acrivos passed away on February 17, 2025. Born in Greece in 1928, Prof. Acrivos arrived at Minnesota in 1950 following undergraduate studies at Syracuse University, becoming the  second...

In Memory of Andy Acrivos: University of Minnesota Alumnus and Titan of Chemical Engineering
cse.umn.edu/cems/news/me...

Hell yeah

This is actually true and I learned about it from my dad, who retired from a good career as a civil servant. I'm 100% behind fixing all these weird inefficiencies.

Fixing these weird efficiencies is mostly not what Elon is actually doing though, that's the problem.

Opinion | Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew, Janet Yellen: DOGE Is a Threat to U.S. Democracy. Former Secretaries Rubin, Summers, Geithner, Lew and Yellen argue that DOGE is a threat to America.

New diss track just dropped:

Five Former Treasury Secretaries: Our Democracy Is Under Siege www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/o...

YouTube video by American Physical Society Soap opera in the maze: Geometry matters in Marangoni flows

Amongst all the doom and gloom, check out this clever application of Marangoni Flow!

youtu.be/Jtd7mMW7-0Y

Mistake to see this solely as a higher ed issue. The design of scientific infrastructure after WWII was govt funding a broad network of research via universities. That worked out pretty well for the US, helped make American higher ed a very successful industry w a positive economic externalities