Jim Van Deventer

Grass beach at Talloires, France.

Bay at Talloires, France.

Bay at Talloires, France.

Next installment of Van Deventer European adventure: Talloires, France, is incredible. Located on Lac d'Annecy, there are beautiful view in every direction, and it's incredibly easy to take good pictures (even for a terrible photographer like me!).

View of Lake Annecy from Talloires, France

View of local peaks from Talloires, France

View of the town square of Talloires, France, from the balcony of our apartment rental

Friends, we had an incredible experience earlier this summer. I taught a course in Talloires, France, for Tufts. This gave @allisonvandev.bsky.social, our kids, and me the opportunity to have all kinds of adventures in Europe. More pictures and reflections in the coming weeks.

"As civil servants, NSF employees are bound by their oath to uphold the Constitution.

That oath now compels us to call attention to actions that jeopardize NSF's mission, its independence, and the foundational laws that protect the federal workforce from politicization and abuse."

Op-ed: ‘Even God cannot hear us here’: What I witnessed inside an ICE women’s prison - The Tufts Daily On a Tuesday in March, I had spent most of my day working on my dissertation proposal and started to feel exhausted and hungry. It was the holy month of Ramadan, and I was fasting. Once finished, I qu...

I'm letting Rumeysa's words speak for themselves:

www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2025...

A graph showing NIH funding for new and competitive renewal grants for FY2024 and FY2025 showing a much lower rate of investment for FY2025.

I updated my funding curves last night.

Here are the results for new and competitive renewal grants.

The rate of investment has dropped substantially. This is apparently due to a requirement for DOGE review.

I am calling this effect the "Downward DOGE"

1/2

All 4 of my NIH research grants are terminated. These were grants on MDR-TB treatment & strategies for supporting adolescents living w/ HIV. This is a massive waste of resources. I am heartbroken for my Harvard team, my partners in Peru, the next generation of scientists & our country. Shame.

**** Judge Sessions GRANTS BAIL/RELEASE to Rümeysa Öztürk: "The court finds that [Rümeysa Öztürk's] continued detention cannot stand."

Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund

This is a horrific development for the US National Science Foundation: www.science.org/content/arti...

‘It’s been a tough period’: NIH’s new director speaks with Science Jay Bhattacharya discusses staff morale, grant cuts, and “rumors”

Jocelyn Kaiser's recent interview with the new NIH Director...

www.science.org/content/arti...

Jeremy Berg's recent interactions with the new NIH Director...

Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Day by day, how Trump is roiling science and health STAT is tracking, day by day, what's happened in the words of science and health during the first months of the Trump administration.

💬 “It’s hard to remember all the earthshaking decisions and events that have transpired with unprecedented speed in the first few months of the Trump administration. We’re tracking, day by day, what’s happened in the worlds of science and health.”

✍️ @usha.bsky.social, @statnews.com

Sen. Ossoff: Who out there in the American public is sitting at home demanding that we shut down cancer research and Alzheimer's research?

NYT headline: “Kennedy Advises New Parents to ‘Do Your Own Research’ on Vaccines” Subheader: “In an interview with Dr. Phil, the health secretary offered false information about vaccine oversight and revealed a lack of basic understanding of new drug approvals.”

“And I’m like, what do you mean, you ‘do your own research’? You running a double-blind study in your living room, dawg?”
- A guy walking ahead of me with his friends on a NYC sidewalk in 2021, also my favorite overheard dialogue of the entire pandemic

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Happy Thursday, everyone!

If you were looking for cheap entertainment, you read the right thread today. If you were expecting GOOD entertainment, your expectations for this professor at the end of this particular semester are waaaaayyyy too high.

6/6

My response to this ludicrous idea:

"Your plan will fail, because you haven't planned to exclude Pete Hegseth from the chat, and because you'll force Tufts IT to install it on the lab computer."

5/n

My group's response:

"I propose we move the Jimless channel to Signal...just nobody accidentally add him"

4/n

"Side note: the person(s) that were in the room when I figured it out only blushed moderately and took it quite well."

3/n

"This is great with me; I fully support it. I don't always need to see every question/comment that arises, especially if it ultimately leads to better science by getting people to have freer discussions. So again, I endorse this."

2/n

A lighter topic than, well, most things at the moment:

I found out about the Slack channel my group uses to communicate without me (only took 5 years...). Here's the quote of how I announced this to the group:

"Hey everyone, I found out about the Jimless slack channel(s?) yesterday. ..."

1/n

Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions - rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking steps to make sure students can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope others follow suit.

It ended up only being nine! But day two commences tomorrow...

Question: What's worse than a 10-hour Zoom meeting?

Answer: A ten-hour Teams meeting! So many more technical difficulties...

As a Tufts faculty member, I am extremely grateful for President Kumar's declaration supporting Rumeysa Ozturk. I hope that this support also reassures the international students at Tufts of our commitment to these incredible scholars, students, and community members. We are better because of them.

Daily life goes on: Oh my goodness, living in the Boston suburbs is...very Boston-y. We just got an announcement about Friday being a Red Sox clothing day at the kids' school. LOL. @allisonvandev.bsky.social and I have lived in MA for 14 years, and we still have a Red Sox-gear free house. 😬

Former FDA Commissioner:

Did I not eat dinner the night you prepared disidentification?!? I feel like I would have remembered that...

Try to imagine a situation where you are not allowed to do your job (e.g. working with applicants to formulate successful proposals), you and and your long-time colleagues are fearful of losing their job, ...

1/n

Congratulations, Chris, Ines, and team! And thanks for sharing this work with me in the fall when I visited your group! I learned a lot, and it's great to see this unique work out.