Miranda Scalabrino, PhD

Congrats, Marcos!

Good news from NIH!

Michael Chiang has apparently been reappointed as Director of the National Eye Institute

www.nei.nih.gov/about/our-mi...

Yes. Important in the context of the release of the NIH budget bill today.

NIH has been dismantled this year, and it’s NOT because of a Congressional budget cut.

It’s b/c of Project 2025/Russell Vought reaching into NIH in an unprecedented way and screwing up how it’s run. The budget bill does…

10+ years of vision 👁️research in mice 🐭recasts our ideas about the brain 🧠and sharing data 🧪📈... a brief guide 👇 Thanks to many colleagues and @gtresearch.bsky.social @gt-neuro.bsky.social for connecting us w @us.theconversation.com

Not yet! Christmas party is next week. Yall look excellent!!

Thrilled Scalabrino Lab graduate student Taylor Rau passed her qualifying exam yesterday!

A Scientific Pipeline to the Nobel Prize Fueled by Immigrants

gift article: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/s...

This paper on S-cone circuitry in the cone dominant 13-lines ground squirrel is absolutely stunning. I want to spend the rest of my day (week? month?) playing with the interactive data.

I am obsessed.

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.

New York Times article on science funding with some depressing but familiar curves with interactive graphics.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Screenshot of the session. “Chair 1:00 PM-2:45 PM Nov 16 Miranda Scalabrino Deep conservation of amacrine cell diversity across the vertebrate phylogeny 1:00 PM-1:15 PM Nov 16 Dario Tommasini, Aboozar Monavarf... Adaptive mechanisms allow retinal ganglion cell selectivity to homogeneous stimuli in n... 1:15 PM-1:30 PM Nov 16 Baptiste Lorenzi, Samuele Virgili, D... Afadin-deficient retinas exhibit severe neuronal lamination defects but preserve v... 1:30 PM-1:45 PM Nov 16 Akiko Ueno, Konan Sakuta, Chieko... The role of inhibition in the diurnal modulation of information transfer through... く 1:45 PM-2:00 PM Nov 16 Elliot Birkett, Katarzyna Kupczyk, Le.. Potential mechanism of homeostatic plasticity for synapse maintenance during... 2:00 PM-2:15 PM Nov 16 Taylor Rau, Molly Rasper, Aryan Bh... Physiology of noncanonical ON bipolar cells innervating the accessory ON layer of mou... 2:15 PM-2:30 PM Nov 16 Yao Xue, Seunghoon Lee, David Be... Bipolar Cell Polarity Switch Generated through Rod Signaling Pathway 2:30 PM-2:45 PM Nov 16 Tomomi Ichinose, Deborah Beaudoi.”

Proof:

Screenshot saying “Nanosymposium- Photoreceptors and Retinal Circuitry. Sunday Nov 16 1-2:45pm Room 32A”

At #SfN2025? Come check out the Photoreceptors & Retinal Circuits nanosymposium at 1! I’ve heard all the cool kids will be there and the chair is an absolute rockstar.

Yes. This is another reason why public funding is what we want - why the government should support science with democratic mechanisms of oversight.

Public support means not having to beg toxic billionaires for money.

Without monkeys, neuroscience has no future Research in primate brains has been essential for the development of BCIs, ANNs. New funding and policy changes put future such advances at risk.

Research in primate brains has been essential for the development of brain-computer interfaces and artificial neural networks. New funding and policy changes put future such advances at risk, write Cory Miller, @movshon.bsky.social and Doris Tsao.

#neuroskyence

bit.ly/47MXYLH

We’re hiring! Join the Sivyer Lab at The University of Sydney as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Neurodegeneration within the Snow Vision Accelerator, a $50M initiative tackling glaucoma and optic nerve disease. iPSCs, electrophysiology, drug discovery, and gene therapy.

As a new PI, how can anyone distinguish between no NIH funding because I suck or because the U.S. govt sucks? It’s not like I’ve had the opportunity to establish a track record. And now taking away critical feedback that would help develop future grants.

Looking real bleak out there.

On the way to #SfN25 and I love to see all the posters in the airport! The yearly neuro migration begins.

N.I.H. Worker Who Criticized Trump Health Policies Says She Is on Administrative Leave

NEW: Jenna Norton, an NIH employee who is openly critical of Trump & RFK Jr, has been put on "non-disciplinary" administrative leave. She says the administration is trying to "scare and silence me." An HHS official, asked to comment, called her a radical leftist.
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/u...

Orange cat sleeping in a bean club box.

Feedback to hotel: we love cats

So happy to have had Katherine Wert visit MCW yesterday! The work coming out of her lab is just incredible and hugely impactful.

And importantly, while a few years to settle out might seem no biggie, it sure as heck is a big deal to those PIs who have been on the job for just a few years and are looking at the tenure decision looming ahead.

and there it is. the absolutely massive change in R01s funded multi-year. our perceptions that the new mandate, sorry strong suggestion, has had a dramatic effect on forward funding and therefore success rates is validated.

Woman dressed in a homemade hawk costume that kind of looks like an owl. She is eating poorly constructed fake entrails from a plastic bag labeled snacks and has an ID with “EI Hawk” written on tape and a photo of a hawk taped on.

Real hawk sitting on top of the Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin sign above the Eye Institute logo on the Eye Institute building.

Happy Halloween from MCW Eye Institute’s resident hawk. I did not leave the remains of my snacks around the building, unlike other hawks I know…

Someone asked me the other day*:

How do we replace all the science that’s being lost across the US as NIH, NSF etc are being lawlessly destroyed?

The answer is: we cannot. It is impossible.
The task now is to defend #NIH and public funding for medical research.
1/ 🧪 #neuroscience

I’m a current mentee and this program has been phenomenal. Happy to chat with anyone interested.

sure, if you enjoy the horrifying limits of human perception

We as consumers are paying for tariffs when we buy foreign products and as taxpayers will paying for bailouts of companies impacted by retaliatory tariffs. Double whammy of bad policy.

@joann-trejo.bsky.social, @marymunson4.bsky.social and I have a commentary in @natcellbio.nature.com on recent attacks on DEI in biomedical research: "If scientific research, especially biomedical research, is meant to serve everyone, then it requires that everyone has an opportunity to participate"

This is what democracy looks like. #NoKings