Monica M. Burdick, Ph.D.

AIMBE has launched our new Citizen Advocate for Science Letter: takeaction.io/aimbe/scienc...

We ask the broader scientific community to widely share this letter (✍️ <1 minute) with friends, family, and other concerned citizens to urge their elected officials to protect biomedical research funding 👇

Please join the chorus of voices, including my own, in support of the talented, hardworking and dedicated scientists and staff at NIH. They serve their country by deploying their training and skills to improve the health and quality of life of all Americans 🙏 🇺🇸

Which means that alumni degrees will be devalued as well.

If you went to Johns Hopkins, or Yale, and they do a deal with Trump, your degree just got MUCH less valuable.

Alumni should be on the rampage right now to prevent this.

This is what’s also going to happen to any university that strikes a deal with Trump.

We won’t be able to save any university that collaborates with or is forcibly taken over by Trump. But that university will destroy its reputation and itself. Sadly, FL’s New College is an example of that ruin.

The fight for US science and universities is a political fight, the right not us has made it political, and we cannot shirk from political engagement if we want to save science.

Our problem is not that our society does not sufficiently appreciate the economic return on investment in science. It is that we value education and knowledge generation only in economic terms.

FWIW, NIH had already silently barred Harvard and four other schools from receiving funds — and agency staff were forbidden from telling applicants and grantees about it.

bsky.app/profile/maxk...

Backwards.

Harvard provides a service to the federal government that the government cannot provide itself: scientific research. Harvard has talent the government needs. So it pays Harvard to do work that helps America. (h/t @samwang.bsky.social)

The Trump admin doesn't care about America.

#WithoutNSF funding, it's unlikely I would have structured my courses to bring so many students into my research lab for lab modules. These experiences directly contributed to some of them (and their TAs) securing jobs in pharma & biotech, as they told me.

The US needs more NSF funding, not less.

My 1st two grants were from the NSF, allowing me to train hundreds of engineering and biomed/sci undergrad and grad students in biotech & diagnostics, on top of the primary research goals. Those former students are multiplying the grants' impacts across multiple industries and academia. #WithoutNSF

Receiving the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship was the pivotal moment that made me commit to completing a PhD rather than an MS. I was quite indifferent to a PhD at the time, really only wanting some more specialization to add to my chem engineering BS. #WithoutNSF my life would be very different.

URGENT ACTION FOR NSF GRANTEES.

For current & recent (since 2020) awards, archive your award history this afternoon/tonight. Screenshot/download/print your work in research.gov & alert your partners.

We have credible threats to integrity of awards tracking systems (via @jeremymberg.bsky.social)

This is a super interesting thread and I love it🧋

This whole 🧵

Thinking of you and all my mentors & colleagues at Hopkins. Keep fighting, stay strong.

Johns Hopkins Plans Staff Layoffs After $800 Million Grant Cuts Local and international health research efforts are already winding down as the university braces for even more potential cuts.

"The Trump administration has terminated $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University, spurring the nation’s top spender on research and development to plan layoffs and cancel health projects, from breast-feeding support efforts in Baltimore to mosquito-net programs in Mozambique."

Closed gray door of a classroom. The door has a vertical window, and a person is visible inside the room.

Couldn't make it to the #StandUpForScience rallies today (bad timing), but I was able to attend the teach-in at SUNY Geneseo today. Here's a cool pic of the door to Bailey 103/104😅 I promise I went inside!

One class of NIH grants that are crucial to developing future generations of biomedical workers are

NIH training grants using the T32 mechanism.

These awards provide direct support for graduate students and/or fellows during at least part of their training periods.

1/n

Thank you @jeremymberg.bsky.social for highlighting the special importance of T32s. This allowed me to launch an interdisciplinary chemistry/biology interface (CBI) graduate program at UCB in early 2000s. For the first time, due to this funding, chem PhD students were able to do rotations. 1/n

It is actually a problem that scientists keep marching for science though instead of against fascism and for humanity

They want to doxx faculty of color/queer faculty and anyone who teaches that we are human

I read the new NIH supplemental guidance on indirect costs. It's basically 💩 written by 🤡

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Scientific institutions have a long history of anticipatory obedience Societies should learn from this and speak up to support inclusion

"Anyone who has studied science under the Nazis...cannot fail to be dismayed and alarmed at the parallels in the response so far of scientific institutions and academies to the purges and abuses of power following Trump’s executive orders" 🧪 #scicomm

www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/scie...