Rebekah Evans

Looking forward to it!

A line grant showing new and competitive renewal awards made by NIH is fiscal year 2026 compared to 2021-2025. The line for fiscal year 2026 is very close to zero.

My (now) weekly update on 2026 NIH funding.

New and competitive renewal awards.

3 new awards (compared to ~100 expected based on recent years).

No new ICs... still just NIA, NINDS, NIDCD, and NIDCR.

1/2

Graphic helps visualize how MYF funds FEWER grants despite the increase in budget approval by Congress. https://www.researchamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ACT-for-NIH-Multi-Year-Funding-One-Pager_October-2025.pdf

🧪IMPORTANT! This graphic explains how science all over the US is funded. Congress approved a 2% increase in the #NIH budget for FY 26.

Buried in the bill-
Shift of ~40% of grants to MYF. This will still result in a 35% DECREASE in the NUMBER of grants funded per yr.

Russel Vought is behind this.

Dear Congresswoman @foushee.house.gov, the multi year funding (MYF) in the HHS/NIH bill is normed to 2025 - please propose an amendment to norm to 2024, like the Senate version. As it stands, ~1/4-1/3 of NIH $ will be sequestered by MYF, a big cut to the Triangle's STEM economy!

Multi-year funding is a dirty trick by #RussellVought. This way the #Trump administration can say they're spending what Congress appropriated for research, BUT they'll only fund 1/5 the number of grants. Call your Senators/Reps now. Science hangs in the balance. H/T @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social

A Quiet Policy Shift That Could Devastate American Science Why NIH’s sudden move to multi-year grant funding should alarm every principal investigator and university

A reminder as Congress finalizes NIH appropriations: the bill must limit multiyear funding (MYF), Vought's way of cutting the NIH budget without cutting the budget. MYF will devastate the research workforce.

@safa-science.bsky.social wrote this in July. Still relevant: substack.com/@scienceandf...

patrick star from spongebob squarepants with his hands folded ALT: patrick star from spongebob squarepants with his hands folded

Likewise, Congressman Cole from Oklahoma is the chair of the overall House Appropriations committee.

If you can, reach out to his office as well.

It is noteworthy that OMB is willing to veto a bill over a minor-seeming NIH operational issue.

This makes me think this is part of a bigger plan...

Congressman Aderholt from Alabama is the chair and he is apparently willing to help OMB here, adding report language (which is toothless) rather than including this in the law.

If you are from Alabama, please contact his office and your Senators and share your thoughts.

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a close up of a brown surface with a few spots ALT: a close up of a brown surface with a few spots

The appropriations bill that includes NIH is being finalized.

The Senate bill includes a bipartisan amendment from Senators Capito (WV) and Baldwin (WI) limiting multi-year funding of grants.

The House version does not and OMB has issued a veto threat if the House includes such language.

1/3

ScienceInsider: Firing of neuroscience institute chief Walter Koroshetz adds to NIH’s leadership vacuum

by @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social

bit.ly/490XPWR @science.org

An email to NINDS staff from Walter Koroshetz announcing that his reappointment request has been denied.

More news (not good) from NIH

The renewal request from National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke Director Walter Koroshetz has been denied.

I guess the NIH_leadership™ needed another position to fill with their time-tested recruitment process.

Funding curve for NIH for fiscal years 2015-2026 showing the fiscal year 2026 curve (in red) well below the fraction of the annual appropriation for previous years.

My first funding curve post for Fiscal Year 2026

FY2026 is off to a slow start. Some of this is due to the government shut down, but some of it is likely due to the new process for "remediating" applications that are deemed not to align with "agency priorities".

These are ALL renewal awards (with a few supplements).

No new or competitive renewal awards!

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

My trainees absolutely need this, lol #sfn25

Posters H16 and K5

Lindsey Russ and Briana Bernstein ready for the TPDA poster session this evening. #SfN25

Three students sitting behind a table that says Georgetown University.

Interested in doing you PhD at Georgetown? Come chat with students and faculty at grad fair booth 48A. #SFN25

We are definitely going to sell out of laser cut brain earrings early in the conference!!! Warning!

#SfN25

Board V4: Nov. 19, 2025, 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM PSTR453.16 - Cholinergic neurons in the pedunculopontine nucleus receive local glutamatergic input *L. A. RUSS1, R. C. EVANS2; Board V2: Nov. 19, 2025, 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM PSTR453.14 - The superior colliculus strongly excites cholinergic and glutamatergic neurons in the pedunculopontine nucleus *B. J. BERNSTEIN1, P. A. FORCELLI2, R. C. EVANS1; Board U5: Nov. 19, 2025, 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM PSTR453.01 - Calcium currents shape PPN response to stimulation: A computational perspective *A. K. THOMAS1,2, J. E. RUBIN1,2, M. FALLAH3, R. C. EVANS3, A. H. GITTIS4,5;

Our lab has 2 great posters this year at #SfN25 and a collaborative poster making a computational modeling of the PPN. Come see us on Wednesday afternoon!

Sigh. NIH normally sends several hundred scientists to the SFN annual meeting to learn, exchange info, come up with new ideas, and advance science. (The exchange of ideas is the very core of the scientific enterprise.)

This year, no one from NIH will attend due to the gov't implosion.

Crowd by a street many American flags and a sign that says defend the constitution.

#nokings protest yesterday. Woodbridge, VA. Peaceful, positive. Chants of "we love america"

Trump Administration Will Rehire Scores of Experts Fired in Error

Seeing a lot of celebration of this as a win.

But at NIH we have seen this exact play before.

It looks like it is the Vought strategy -and to stop the lawless firings we have to see the bigger picture.
A 🧵:

RFK Jr. told Congress no working scientists were fired, but these top NIH brain scientists are still facing job cuts "As far as I know, we have not fired any working scientists," RFK Jr. had told Congress.

But it took weeks or months of confusion before some had their (lawless) RIF notices revoked.

As was widely reported, several NIH scientists, including a major-award-winning Parkinson’s researcher, weren't fully de-RIF’d until @durbin.senate.gov caught out RFK Jr at a Senate hearing about them.

CDC ‘Not Functional’ After Trump Administration Orders Mass Firings The layoffs targeted leaders in departments related to respiratory diseases, chronic diseases and global health.

“CDC will have lost its ability to detect outbreaks and respond to them. It will no longer be able to track diseases, in America and around the globe. That includes infectious threats like flu, foodborne illnesses, and Ebola, as well as chronic diseases and injuries.”
time.com/7325192/cdc-...

Wow! Fascinating work, congratulations!

One fascinating thing that we found while revising this paper was that the dopaminergic neuron of the SNc project to the PPN and stimulating their axons locally in the PPN evokes reward-like behaviors!

The nigral input was really really strong to one particular cell type though, and we are planning to follow up this paper with a deeper dissection of those specific cells.

We found that the pallidal input only connected to 2 out of the 6 cell types, but the nigral input went to essentially every single PPN cell!

Using electrophysiology and optogenetics, we tested the connections of each inhibitory input to each of 6 different PPN cell types. This was a huge amount of work conducted by a recently graduated PhD student, Dr. Michel Fallah.