Jake Buzhardt

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine (Gift Article) A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

While the administration has said it is cutting “woke programs” that “poison the minds of Americans", it actually funded fewer grants in every area of science and medicine.

“They brought everything to a stop,” said Sarah Kobrin, a branch chief at the N.I.H.’s National Cancer Institute

The official home of the Python Programming Language

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-...
🧵

Daniel Naroditsky and the Chase of Beauty Remembering a chess grandmaster who found wonder in every move.

The passing of Daniel Naroditsky hits hard. He was a sweet soul, a wonderful chess teacher, and he’s gone much too soon. www.joeposnanski.com/p/daniel-nar...

Job season in academia can take a toll on confidence, identity, and energy. You’re not alone.

Sometimes it helps to zoom out.

Hunter Wapman’s thesis highlights some interesting hiring patterns:
www.hne.golf/static/pdfs/...

Non-US trends may differ, perhaps shaping distinct knowledge bubbles.

Our approach could be useful for flow control applications, as this minimal seed trajectory laminarizes naturally without actuation. This could lead to control schemes which exploit the state-space structure of a turbulent flow for improved efficiency. (3/3)

To answer this question, we develop an optimization-based approach for identifying a nearby point beyond the edge of chaos - the complex boundary separating turbulent and laminarizing flows. We call this point the minimal seed for relaminarization. (2/3)

Figure depicting the minimal seeds and laminarizing trajectories for a few points in the turbulent region of state space.

Excited to share a new preprint with Michael Graham on identifying efficient routes to laminarization in turbulent flows. In this work, consider the question: What is the closest point to a turbulent attractor that laminarizes without a chaotic transient? (1/3)

Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2508.08519

Does Form Really Shape Function? | Quanta Magazine From brain folds to insect architecture, L. Mahadevan explains how complex biological forms and behaviors emerge through the interplay of physical forces, environment and embodiment.

The intricate folds of your lungs, gut, and brain are each the result of pattern formation. Tune in to my conversation with L. Mahadevan on "The Joy of Why" from @prx.org and @quantamagazine.bsky.social: www.quantamagazine.org/does-form-re...

May 17, 2025 SUBJECT: Supporting science and opposing the unfair targeting of universities under the guise of fighting antisemitism Dear Senators Baldwin and Johnson, I have previously written to you about my deep concern about the potential loss of American leadership in science, engineering, and medicine stepping from several policies pursued by the White House, including large-scale cuts to our agencies that support fundamental scientific and medical research: the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NASA, and the Department of Energy (DOE). If enacted, the massive cuts to these science agencies will push premier American and global talent out of the United States, and the next set of scientific and medical discoveries will happen elsewhere or will not happen at all. We will miss out on technological progress, our health and national security will be harmed, and our economy will grow far slower than it would if we maintain our leadership in science. But I also want to write about the extreme harm being caused to American science by individual targeting of individual American universities. I am a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I run a research group the develops optics/photonics technologies, working at the interface of semiconductor science, quantum science, materials science, and imaging and sensing. My research has been supported by federal government agencies, including the NSF, DOE, DARPA, the Air Force, and the Navy. The alumni of my research group are doing cutting-edge engineering at top American companies like Honeywell, Google, Apple, and Meta, and R&D at government labs and American universities. [due to alt text limit, continued in next screenshot]

[continued from previous alt text] Prior to coming to UW-Madison, I received excellent undergraduate training at Cornell University and graduate training at Harvard University. In recent days, the federal government canceled billions of dollars of grants and contracts for science and medical research that were previously awarded to Harvard, Cornell, and a number of other universities. As far as I can tell, this was done under the guise of fighting antisemitism at these universities. As a Jewish American whose family moved to the United States in significant part to escape antisemitism in the former Soviet Union, I find our government’s justification for funding cuts to these universities to be preposterous and counterproductive. While I am sure that one can find some amount of antisemitism at every university and in any large organization, major research universities like Harvard, Cornell, and UW-Madison have been some of the biggest drivers of the success and prosperity of Jewish Americans. I am confident that a large majority of Jewish Americans oppose these massive, untargeted cuts to research funding to these universities. I would like to encourage you to use the power you have as a member of the Senate to support the American science enterprise and to oppose the defunding of major American universities under the guise of fighting antisemitism. Sincerely, Mikhail Kats Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but *writing in my personal capacity* and not on behalf of my employer

"Supporting science and opposing the unfair targeting of universities under the guise of fighting antisemitism"

My letter (slightly amended), sent today to to my Wisconsin senators and representative. If you feel the same way, I encourage you to contact your representatives

9 Federally Funded Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed Everything

9 Federally Funded Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed Everything www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/s...

Powerful look at what may soon be lost with the proposed end of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, whose roots extend back to the earliest days of atmospheric modeling 70 years ago. And GFDL is just one of multiple NOAA labs/coop institutes on the chopping block.

With Behaviors Like These in Complex Systems, Who Needs Mechanisms? A new study of complex systems supports a growing trend that focuses more on analyzing a system’s collective behavior rather than on trying to uncover the underlying interaction mechanisms.

Researchers have developed a new way to tackle a central problem in the study of complex systems: How to model the interactions between individuals when you can observe only collective behavior?

Introducing CyberDiver!

This new untethered robotic device is capable of actively controlling impact forces and splash dynamics during water entry.
arxiv.org/abs/2503.20702

Design source files:
github.com/harrislab-br...

Work led by #harrislab PhD student John.

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world.


I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

In the physical world, almost all information is transmitted through traveling waves -- why should it be any different in your neural network?

Super excited to share recent work with the brilliant @mozesjacobs.bsky.social: "Traveling Waves Integrate Spatial Information Through Time"

1/14

“Destruction for the ill-conceived notion of cutting costs didn’t put an American on the moon, and it didn’t wipe smallpox from the face of the Earth.” —Dr. Sudip Parikh

Over the past month, the Trump administration has enacted dramatic budget cuts and mass layoffs across federal health and science agencies.

In today’s episode, we discuss the cuts and how the scientific community can respond.

Listen here 🎧: https://buff.ly/4bf3rfn

Enormously harmful to the future of science. My heart breaks for these students who were excited to learn and experience research firsthand.

I’ve been seething and grieving since yesterday’s Friday Night Massacre of NIH overheads, a seeming bit of bureaucratic trivial that will in fact destroy the US university system if unchecked. But I want to get away from budgets and rate breakdowns and F&A percentages for a moment.

Humor me?

F.C.C. Chair Orders Investigation Into NPR and PBS Stations Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, recently expressed concern about NPR and PBS’s sponsorships.

Support your local public radio stations. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/b...

Stream PBS and PBS KIDS Free on Prime Video PBS and Amazon announced that more than 150 local PBS stations and the PBS KIDS Channel will launch ad-free as a Prime Video FAST offering. This marks the…

PBS is now live on Prime — ad-free — and you don't need a subscription to watch.

This marks the first time this programming will be available *free* on a major streaming service.

Channels include PBS Drama, Documentaries, Kids + live feeds for 150 local stations

www.pbs.org/articles/str... #TVSky