whitney loo

If you're a UCLA researcher (PI, grad student, etc) with an NSF, NIH or other suddenly suspended grant, please email or DM me.

I'm trying to confirm what the suspension letters say and how extensive the NIH suspensions are.

Email: Mikhail at calmatters dot org

my group is looking to hire a postdoc to work on a variety of polymer-related projects of their choosing! If you know of any outstanding candidates that are looking for postdoctoral positions, please send them my way

Amid Fear of Retaliation, N.S.F. Workers Sign Letter of Dissent

“More than 140 employees of the National Science Foundation have signed a letter denouncing what they described as efforts to undermine one of the country’s main science funding agencies.”

do you ever stare at the ceiling and think about how the worldwide scientific establishment did the impossible and created a COVID vaccine in under a year and the response of the general public has been to go on an unstoppable rampage to destroy science and scientists

Senate appropriators showed today they are *not* down with Trump's proposed budget cuts for NASA and NSF. (Likely NOAA too, but can't say for 100% yet.)

Long way to go to a law. But this is rare good news for scientists this year.

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

SCOOP

www.importantcontext.news/p/national-s...

When history marks the point where we lost the future to China, this will be it.

Curiosity to contribution: Aidiel's journey from research to recognition - College of Engineering - University of Wisconsin-Madison Chemical engineering senior Aidiel shares how undergraduate research in the Loo Lab—and a Hilldale Fellowship—shaped his path from UW–Madison to graduate school and a future in energy storage.

check out this interview with one of our amazing undergrad researchers, Aidiel! Aidiel will graduate from UW-Madison in August and start his PhD in ChemE at University of Minnesota this fall. We are so proud of Aidiel in the Loo Lab!

engineering.wisc.edu/blog/curiosi...

first Loo Lab paper is out now in @pubs.acs.org! here we show how polymer blends can tune Li ion solvation site and enhance ion transport

read it here: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

GOP Bill Would Legalize DOGE and Let Trump Dismantle Everything Donald Trump’s DOGE team is on dubious legal footing. Republicans have an efficiency bill to let him tear apart the federal government.

New @rollingstone.com by me: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Judges have told Trump, if he wants #DOGE -style austerity, he must get statutory reorg. authority from Congress. The GOP's Reorganizing Govt. Act of 2025 would give him exactly that.

Extra material: douglaslucas.com/blog/2025/06...

Baldwin to RFK Jr: "Is funding for Alzheimer's research centers DEI? Because you're holding up $65m for 14 of those centers in 9 states, including UW Madison. Is funding for cancer centers DEI? Because you're holding up $47m in cancer center support grants at 9 cancer centers in 8 states."

yay!!! we are so excited for you to join us in madison! On Wisconsin!

we finally got around to updating the group website! read about all of the group's accomplishments this semester here: loolab.che.wisc.edu/news/

THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION WASHINGTON, DC 20202 May 5, 2025 Dr. Alan Garber Office of the President Harvard University Massachusetts Hall Cambridge, MA 02138 Dr. Garber, The Federal Government has a sacred responsibility to be a wise and important steward of American taxpayer dollars. Harvard University, despite amassing a largely tax-free $53.2 billion dollar endowment (larger than the GDP of 100 countries), receives billions of dollars of taxpayer largess each year. Receiving such taxpayer funds is a privilege, not a right. Yet instead of using these funds to advance the education of its students, Harvard is engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law. Where do many of these "students" come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country—and why is there so much HATE? These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public? Harvard University has made a mockery of this country's higher education system. It has invited foreign students, who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the United States of America, to its campus. In every way, Harvard has failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor. It had scrapped standardized testing requirements and a normalized grading system. This year Harvard was forced to adopt an embarrassing "remedial math" program for undergraduates. Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this "acclaimed university"? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest levels of mathematics, are being rejected? Harvard has even been embroiled in humiliating plagiarism scandals, exposed clearly and plainly in the media, with respect to your then…

running the institution in a totally chaotic way. Harvard alumnus and highly successful hedge fund manager Bill Ackman noted that, under her leadership, Harvard has become "a political advocacy organization for one party." Ackman has called for the resignation of Pritzker, concluding that the "[t)he mismanagement here is Penny Pritzker" and noting that any serious corporation would have removed her after a litany of recent failings and the fact that, incredibly, "Harvard is not in a good financial position." According to Ackman, one of the world's foremost finance experts, Harvard's so-called S53 billion endowment is "massively overstated as far as what it's really worth," and Harvard has irresponsibly taken out $8 billion in debt. If this is true, it is concerning evidence of Harvard's disastrous mismanagement, indicating an urgent need for massive reform-not continued taxpayer investment. If Harvard prefers not to change, then Harvard should have no problem using its overflowing endowment to fund its bloated bureaucracy. At its best, a university should fulfill the highest ideals of our Nation, and enlighten the thousands of hopeful students who walk through its magnificent gates. But Harvard has betrayed this ideal. Perhaps most alarmingly, Harvard has failed to abide by the United States Supreme Court's ruling demanding that it end its racial preferencing, and continues to engage in ugly racism in its undergraduate and graduate schools, and even within the Harvard Law Review itself. Our universities should be bastions of merit that reward and celebrate excellence and achievement. They should not be incubators of discrimination that encourage resentment and instill grievance and racism into our wonderful young Americans. The above concerns are only a fraction of the long list of Harvard's consistent violations of its own legal duties. Given these and other concerning allegations, this letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek GRANTS from the fede…

Federal Agencies. The Administration's priorities have not changed and today's letter marks the end of new grants for the University. These requests will advance the best interests of Harvard University, so it can reclaim its status as a respected educational institution for the future leaders of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter! Sincerely, Linda E. McMahon Secretary of Education

🚨🚨 Deranged letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon to Harvard’s president, cutting off federal funding for any new grants.

Worth reading in full. It is NUTS.

Study: Cuts to Science Funding Will Yield Great Recession-Level Economic Hit Splinter is your home for news and opinions that challenge power in our political and economic system that's becoming more unhinged each and every day.

The cuts to science funding *alone* will generate a Great Recession-sized hole in the economy.

"It’s less a 'self-inflicted wound' and more 'jumping head-first into a wood chipper.'”

BTW. If you’re a scientist and are feeling hollowed out, depressed, fried, frustrated, confused, and simply exhausted by everything, I understand you. You are perfectly sane and you are not alone.

A 50% cut to science funding (which is close to what Trump is proposing for NIH) would result in huge negative long-term economic outcomes:
*7.6% cut in GDP
*8.6% cut in federal revenues
*equivalents of making the average American $10,000 poorer

How chemical engineers are tackling earth's sustainability challenges - College of Engineering - University of Wisconsin-Madison Often overlooked, chemical engineering is one of the most important factors in addressing our planet's complex challenges.

Happy Earth Day!

check out some of the research the CBE department at UW-Madison is conducting to address current sustainability challenges: engineering.wisc.edu/blog/how-che...

I created and taught a machine learning course for chemical engineers this semester. In my last lecture I cover ethical issues and I told a story about the connection between chemical physics, large language models, and copyright law. Read on if you want to know more!

go dubs

Harvard will not comply.

“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
— Harvard President Alan M. Garber

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

SCAM ALERT. This is a fake conference that ripped off my and other people’s names to trick people into registering. There is no such conference that I or the others shown were invited or agreed to. We are working to try to get this fraud taken down from the web.

chemsymposia.com

Congratulations!! can't wait to celebrate with you at MRS next week

If you don't want to see this horrible garbage happen in every future high-stakes election, make sure it demonstrably fails in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race by helping elect Susan Crawford

NIH cancels diversity grant for biomedical research at University of Rhode Island - The Boston Globe The National Institutes of Health said diversity, equity and inclusion “harms the health of Americans.”

Some more details on our terminated NIH grant, including quotes detailing the direct harm this termination has on our freshmen and sophomore students.

Thanks to @stephmachado.bsky.social and @globeri.bsky.social for highlighting this.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/27/m...

Welp. It happened. Our NIH training grant was terminated on Friday.

Just highlighting this incredibly derisive language used in our termination notice.

To focus on the positives, see some of the great things our undergraduates have done over the last couple of years: web.uri.edu/esteemed/

that’s a wrap on APS Global Summit! four oral presentations and one poster presentation from the Loo Lab. Every day these students make me so proud 🥰

Congrats! I'll be sure to mention this when I meet Yaozu this afternoon at his visit to Wisconsin

We need to organize--let’s help each other.

NIH is cancelling grants, but it's not clear exactly what they're cancelling and why. Without this information, we can't respond.

I've started a Google Sheet to track grant cancellations.

Please add any canceled grants you know of and spread the word!

although the 3sigma roughness values of Si are almost identical, there are big differences in the frequency dependence of the roughness!

SIS reduces roughness at high frequencies while liftoff works best at low frequencies