Alex Yenkin

I got notice today that my NIH fellowship, which was supposed to help support me through the rest of my PhD, was terminated.

I am fortunately in a position to receive funding through other means, but this really just sucks in so many ways.

Current situation at Harvard Medical School for NIH grants view.u.hms.harvard.edu?qs=3ed8c01b9...

She Worked in a Harvard Lab to Reverse Aging, Until ICE Jailed Her President Trump’s immigration crackdown ensnared Kseniia Petrova, a scientist who fled Russia after protesting its invasion of Ukraine. She fears arrest if she is deported there.

“The customs official canceled Ms. Petrova’s visa on the spot and began deportation proceedings.” One way to understand Trump effect in govt: an ever widening circle of people, like low-level customs officials, get to make categorical decisions abt lives of others. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/s...

Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist at Harvard Medical School, was detained at Logan Airport after returning from France and sent to an ICE detention in Louisiana, The Insider reports.

A big critic of Putin and the war in Ukraine, she may now be deported to Russia.

Inverted Alu repeats in loop-out exon skipping across hominoid evolution https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.07.642063v1

Very important to get this word out!

Researchers 'stunned' after HHMI abruptly cancels program to make science more inclusive The Howard Hughes Medical Institute abruptly ended a $60 million program to improve the retention of diverse college students

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the nation’s largest private funder of biomedical research, this week abruptly ended a $60 million program aimed at improving the retention of a diverse student body in undergraduate science and engineering programs.

Randomizing the human genome by engineering recombination between repeat elements We lack tools to edit DNA sequences at scales necessary to study 99% of the human genome that is noncoding. To address this gap, we applied CRISPR prime editing to insert recombination handles into re...

We're delighted to share our work on scrambling the human genome using prime editing, repetitive elements, and recombinases in @science.org , led by @jonaskoeppel.bsky.social , @f-raphael.bsky.social , with @proftomellis.bsky.social and George Church.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Red Line speed restriction dashboard

Delighted to see the Red Line running without any speed restrictions for the first time in 15 years! Thank you to GM Eng and everyone @mbta.bsky.social who worked to get this done. 🚇

Distinguishing real from invented problems with the NIH How does the NIH work and where does it work well?

I wrote about the National Institutes of Health and the various serious and unserious proposals for NIH reform that have been floating around. It is important to understand how this agency actually functions and point criticism at the right problems. A short 🧵:

I only prepped a 45 minute presentation (~30ish slides + bonus) for a 1.5 hour meeting, it left plenty of time for discussion and questions, and it seemed like that was better than overloading with info + results

The wild turkey population has exploded in Mass. Here’s expert advice for living peacefully among them. - The Boston Globe The rebirth of wild turkeys in Massachusetts has sparked numerous complaints about the aggressive birds. But they are not out to get you: “Approach every interaction with a turkey as if you are the bi...

look at all those turkeys