Bora Özaltun

Four charts showing the extent of cuts to NASA in the FY26 budget:

- Cuts to every science division
- Smallest science funding since 1984
- 19 active, inflight missions cancelled
- Smallest NASA budget since FY 1961

31.05.2025 11:45 — 👍 420    🔁 258    💬 23    📌 31

JPL is one of NASA's major science and climate centers—home to the Mars rovers and 1000s of people. Firefighters held back the flames at JPL’s gates, but many of our coworkers lost their homes. Here’s a thread of their public GoFundMes if you can share & support however possible:

10.01.2025 17:40 — 👍 935    🔁 388    💬 22    📌 31

Donate to California Wildfires and Help Those in Need Devastating wildfires are raging throughout California. Donate to verified California wildfire relief fundraisers, or start your own.

Was evacuated safely from my home along with 1000s of my coworkers and friends. JPL remains standing due to heroic efforts of the fire crew, but shut down operations for the first time since 1964. The impact in our community is devastating. Please help if you can: www.gofundme.com/c/act/wildfi...

09.01.2025 17:50 — 👍 8    🔁 5    💬 0    📌 0

This has been a major puzzle for energy/dev: Electrification is essential for a modern economy, but WTP in developing contexts (and impacts) seem quite low.

There's a JMP this year from Abdou Cisse @ Berkeley ARE that helps explain why: ⬇️ reliability, ⬇️ WTP. Impressive paper.

www.acisse.com

06.12.2024 21:35 — 👍 45    🔁 19    💬 1    📌 0

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is taking shape! Its primary mirror and coronagraph instrument are now integrated. Being an engineer on this is exciting - we develop advanced optics hardware and software to directly image exoplanets and allow scientists to study worlds beyond our solar system.

04.12.2024 14:37 — 👍 5    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Second, can minor interventions help?
Increasing the font size of ratings reduced cancellations by 71.7%, effectively eliminating racial bias.
Displaying names upfront? Less effective. While there was a 30% reduction, it wasn’t statistically significant.

21.11.2024 17:56 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

Excited to share our new working paper! A simple informational intervention dramatically reduces statistical discrimination in ride-sharing platforms.

18.11.2024 16:40 — 👍 3    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0