We came to the end of our regular weekly lab meeting and were about to leave when our principal investigator (PI) announced he had something important to share. “I’m sorry team. We’ve run out of funds, and I have to let you all go.” Looking around the room I saw a mix of confusion and shock on the faces of the other lab members—another postdoc, a lab technician, and a handful of graduate students. As it began to dawn on me that I was being laid off from my postdoc position, I tried not to panic. I told myself that with my Ph.D. and two bachelor’s degrees, surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to find a job. My job search didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped. But luckily, I had an alternate income stream to fall back on—one I’d cultivated during my postdoc.
Three years earlier, I had finished my Ph.D. and moved with my family across the country to start a research position in the PI’s lab. Becoming a postdoc wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. But I was an international scholar on a visa who didn’t have many career choices open to me, and it felt like a safe choice that would help provide for my family. I also imagined it would help me with the goal I had at the time: to be a teaching professor.
Soon after arriving, though, I realized that although my postdoc salary was twice what I earned as a Ph.D. student, it wasn’t enough to cover rent, food, gas, and other basic expenses in pricey California. I thought I might need to take a second job in retail to keep up. But after searching for ideas online, I discovered freelance writing as an option, which I could do from home at night after my son went to bed.
I found my first gig while browsing Craigslist one day. A local web designer needed someone to write social media and blog content to help her advertise her business. Within a few months, I found other clients and grew this side hustle to about $1200 a month. I enjoyed the work, and it was a huge help with the household budget.
After my postdoc ended, I kept writing. But my goal was to secure a full-time position to support my family, and so I spent most of my time searching for and applying for jobs. I submitted applications for scores of positions I thought I was qualified for inside and outside academia. Most resulted in rejections or no response. About 6 months into the search, I began to feel defeated. Was this what I got for working so hard in grad school? To have nobody even acknowledge my applications? I felt like a complete failure—that with all this education, I was unable to secure an offer for a full-time position.
That’s when I decided to stop applying for jobs and focus on growing my writing business, an option that was open to me because, by then, I was a permanent resident and didn’t need a job to maintain my immigration status. My writing work up to that point was mostly focused on projects that didn’t leverage my scientific training—blog posts for finance websites, sales emails for dermatology practices, for instance. But I thought that perhaps I could find opportunities in science writing specifically.
So, I began to share my thoughts on subjects in the sciences and samples of my writing on LinkedIn. Shortly after I started doing this, health and science companies started to reach out, wanting to work with me. For the first time in more than a year, opportunities were coming to me, a welcome change from the fruitless searching I had been doing. I was able to build my portfolio and gain confidence in my new field, which eventually led me to dip my toes into the job application waters once again. I was ecstatic when, finally, I received an offer for a full-time science writer role at a life science marketing agency.
When I started my journey as a writer, I viewed it simply as a side gig. But it eventually grew into a career that brings me joy. It kept me afloat when I was coping with the grief and loss of purpose I felt as an unemployed Ph.D. graduate. It also showed me that there’s room to think creatively and build new opportunities for yourself. Sometimes good can come from a path redirected.
http://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.png00Vincent Barbierhttp://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.pngVincent Barbier2025-05-22 14:02:082025-05-22 14:02:08As a laid off postdoc, I turned to a side hustle—and found a new career
I stepped out of the car, travel backpack in hand, returning from winter break rested and rejuvenated by seeing friends. I was feeling optimistic about my health, too. A recent appointment with an ear specialist had offered some hope that doctors would be able to diagnose the cause of the dizziness that had plagued me since nearly the beginning of my Ph.D. and finally treat it effectively. But what I found in my mailbox made my heart race: a stack of medical bills, the latest additions to the pile of unpaid invoices already sitting on my dresser.
When I first arrived in the United States from Brazil to pursue my Ph.D., I felt nothing could stand in my way. But a few months into my studies, a persistent dizziness crept in. Walking to campus, reading papers, and even grocery shopping left me unsteady. I rushed to the university clinic, where the doctor said I had vertigo and recommended rehab. But I had heard countless stories of graduate students paying thousands of dollars out of pocket for treatment of various ailments, and I was hesitant to rack up bills that would certainly outpace my meager stipend. Instead, I turned to YouTube, where I found at-home exercises. For weeks, every night before bed, I moved my head from side to side, then up and down. Eventually, the symptoms disappeared. I thought I was in the clear.
Two years later, the dizziness returned. This time, the exercises failed, and over-the-counter medications offered little relief. With my worsening symptoms making it difficult to keep up with my Ph.D. work, I didn’t see any alternative but to seek medical treatment despite my worries about the cost. I went back to the doctor, who referred me to an ear specialist. I called to book an appointment, only to be told the wait was 4 months. Far from my family, with no clear treatment plan, I felt helpless and frustrated.
Shortly afterward, I traveled out of state for winter break in a larger city, where I secured a last-minute appointment with an ear specialist. After being referred to one medical center, then another, I was given a steroid shot and orders for a brain MRI and more ear tests. No final diagnosis yet, but a clear message: The dizziness would likely return until I found the cause. Still, the steroids brought my first moment of relief in months.
Back home, after collecting the pile of medical bills from my mailbox, I contacted the university’s health insurance office for a cost estimate for the recommended tests. Even with my student insurance, the out-of-pocket amount was far beyond what I could afford. Then came another blow: The referrals from the out-of-state doctors weren’t valid locally. I would still need to wait for the in-state ear specialist appointment. There I was, facing the imminent return of my symptoms, medical bills piling up, and unable to schedule or afford the tests I needed. My stress levels soared.
In the weeks that followed, I began to experience heart palpitations, shortness of breath, and insomnia. After I wore a doctor-ordered heart monitor for 2 days, the diagnosis came back as sinus tachycardia—in other words, stress-induced anxiety. My body was sounding an alarm I could no longer ignore: This situation was unsustainable.
That was 3 months ago. Since then, I finally had my in-state appointment; with it came new referrals and, of course, more bills. This time, however, I have found a stopgap solution: I travel to Brazil yearly to conduct fieldwork, and during those trips I also attend medical checkups. This year, with multiple U.S. medical referrals in hand, I was able to schedule tests that will finally get me closer to a diagnosis. It’s unbelievable to think that, even with travel costs, care can be so much cheaper or even free through Brazil’s public and universal health care system. I know I’m lucky to have this option. Many other students face similar challenges without it.
Medical expenses can be overwhelming, especially for international students whose visas often restrict us from earning income beyond our stipends. No student should have to choose between financial survival and medical care. No student should lose valuable time and mental energy over something as fundamental as health care. Universities must step up and provide more comprehensive health coverage for their students so we can focus on our work.
http://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.png00Vincent Barbierhttp://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.pngVincent Barbier2025-05-15 14:17:322025-05-15 14:17:32I got sick during my Ph.D.—but couldn’t afford treatment. Grad students need better support
Experimental Error is a column about the quirky, comical, and sometimes bizarre world of scientific training and careers, written by scientist and comedian Adam Ruben. Barmaleeva/Shutterstock, adapted by C. Aycock/Science
One of the most important skills that scientists need—besides patience with failed experiments and the restraint to not initiate Thanksgiving dinner conversations with That One Cousin—is the ability to read and digest large amounts of information from scientific papers. I have many memories, from college to the present, of knowing that my next several hours will be spent sitting with a fat stack of journal articles, reading, absorbing, thinking, falling asleep for a bit, making a list of household chores in the margin, googling dinner recipes, and reading some more.
Most scientists do this, and we do it often. We want to learn the latest developments in our fields, or lead a journal club, or generally not sound like ignorant ding-dongs when encountering collaborators at conferences. At some point during our training, we come to understand and accept that the paradigm of “a teacher tells you all about it” is unsustainable, and we learn to teach ourselves. In fact, learning science by reading papers can feel extremely intellectually rewarding, especially when the “aha” moments lead to “what if” moments, and you not only understand something new, but you learn to think beyond what’s in the paper to the next series of logical questions.
It can also be very, very boring.
As much as we’d like to pretend that reading scientific papers is always an unmitigated delight, nope. This is why scientists will sometimes say they’ve read a paper when in reality they’ve simply read the abstract and skimmed the figures. Or they’ll cite a paper in their own writing with only a 90% certainty, based on the title, that it’s relevant. And although the abstract and title include useful information, what do you do when you want to read all of the information in dozens or hundreds of papers? Is there a shortcut between the page and your brain?
Now, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), we can triumphantly announce that the answer is, “Sort of!”
One of AI’s strengths, allegedly, is the ability to instantly distill gigantic amounts of information into a little bitty package of highlights, perfect for perusing while sipping a nice espresso. Any time I search the internet for something now, I get a cute little AI-generated summary telling me that, whereas most customers found this cat litter to be a good value for the price, others found its ability to reliably clump somewhat lacking.
But you know this. Unless you’ve spent the past couple years imprisoned by a vengeful sentient robot, you’ve seen how AI has snuck into many of the places that used to require human cognition. You’ve probably also heard of AI’s “hallucinations,” nonsensical responses delivered with complete confidence and self-assurance—which, if you’ve ever graded oral presentations delivered by undergraduates, may not seem too unusual.
So, where does AI land when it comes to something higher stakes than cat litter commerce? Accurate AI-generated summaries of scientific papers could potentially save researchers hours of poring through papers. But if the summaries omit important bits or reach conclusions unsupported by the original papers, they could waste a lot of time and effort by pointing you in the wrong direction.
The latter is exactly what seems to happen, according to a study published in Royal Society Open Science last month. The researchers prompted 10 different AI engines to summarize the findings in 200 abstracts and 100 papers, then searched the summaries for certain types of potentially misleading generalizations. For example, converting a paper’s finding to the present tense or extrapolating a guiding action—such as changing “patients benefitted from therapy” to “patients benefit from therapy” or “therapy is recommended for patients”—transforms a verifiable trial result to what sounds like a forward-looking prescription or endorsement. In general, the summaries omitted many key details—which, one may think, comes with the territory of any summary. But they also seemed to be tuned to present conclusions as applying more broadly than what the study warranted—a flaw that the machines exhibited five times more frequently than human-generated summaries. Strangely, specifically asking the AI to be more accurate only made it less accurate, the same way that telling my kids to go to bed seems to inspire them to start a bag of microwave popcorn.
Something feels rewarding about a rigorous analysis of AI’s flaws. The conclusion that you can’t beat the good old humans bodes well for the future usefulness of the good old humans.
It reminded me, though, of the last time scientists were up in arms about ready-made summaries. Twenty years ago, when I was in grad school, I remember endless hand wringing about overreliance on a site that would surely herald the downfall of scientific research: Wikipedia.
Many saw this new site as too easy to be valid, too useful to be authentic. My classmate once showed me how he edited the Wikipedia entry for “awesome” to include his own name. Surely, we thought, a repository of human knowledge prone to this kind of adulteration can’t be trusted with anything important.
Maybe the same will happen with AI. We should be careful trusting the summaries it generates of scientific literature, and we should probably go read (or at least skim) the original papers before planning our next research steps around them or citing them in our own work. But the same study a few years from now might have a different conclusion. And we all might have a better developed sense, at that time, of how to prompt AI to get the accurate results we want.
AI-generated summary of this article: A human scientist who purchases cat litter reports that AI is amazing and that we should all subjugate ourselves to its mastery.
http://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.png00Vincent Barbierhttp://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.pngVincent Barbier2025-05-14 15:18:062025-05-14 15:18:06Digesting scientific papers is hard. Can AI help?
In February, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump was inaugurated, Rebekah Tromble launched a program to advise scientists and journalists targeted for intimidation and harassment. But she announced it quietly, fearing the very kind of attacks the initiative was meant to counter. “We were truly concerned that trying to draw too much attention to our work would jeopardize our funding,” says the George Washington University social scientist. “It’s a bit counterintuitive for a program that is actually trying to reach and help people.”
Tromble’s paradoxical situation is emblematic of the fear and self-censorship coursing through the nation’s scientific establishment today. As the Trump administration fires swaths of government researchers, cancels scientific grants, and targets leading universities with punishing funding freezes, scientists who might once have welcomed public attention for their work or spoken up on issues affecting their field are instead opting for silence.
“The lived experience of a scientist right now is terrifying,” said one prominent health researcher who asked not to be named out of concern their funding would be targeted. “We love getting our research in The New York Times and Science. You can imagine how much fear is involved if we are saying ‘no.’”
Interviews with science advocacy groups and scientists working in a range of disciplines confirm that what Jen Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls “the fear factor” is rampant. Scientists “have been made to feel like they cannot open their mouth for fear of losing whatever they have left,” she says.
Jones sees it as an escalation of tactics already on display before Trump returned to the White House. She points to billionaire Elon Musk, enlisted by Trump to lead a campaign to shrink federal spending, who used his massive following on his social media platform, X, to target midlevel government officials, including scientists who would normally go unnoticed. “Trump and Musk have spent years perfecting their campaign of fear and intimidation,” she says. Well before the election, Tromble conceived her program in response to that mounting threat.
Now, the rhetoric is coupled with control of the vast levers of government, which the new administration has swiftly used to cut funding for specific research projects and institutions. Since Trump’s inauguration, the two premier federal science funding agencies, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have together canceled more than 2000 grants totaling more than $1.5 billion.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Science in a statement that “the Trump administration is spending its first few months reviewing the previous administration’s projects, identifying waste, and realigning our research spending to match the American people’s priorities and continue our innovative dominance.” NSF declined to answer questions about whether agency officials have heard from scientists afraid of retribution, or whether they were concerned such fears might affect open discussions about research. NIH did not respond to a request for comment.
Although fields such as climate science and public health faced political attacks before this year, U.S. scientists of many stripes now feel at heightened risk, says Janice Lachance, CEO of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), which has nearly 60,000 members working in earth and space science. Some researchers have asked the organization to scrub their names from its public list of committee volunteers because of concern that being identified for their work might make them vulnerable to retribution. Others have demurred when AGU officials asked to share their stories of funding cuts with congressional staff trying to document impacts on active research projects.
Even scientists accustomed to controversy and the public spotlight acknowledge the fear factor. The threats are “so vast and capricious,” says Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale University epidemiologist and veteran of political struggles around AIDS research going back to the 1980s. “As I’m sitting here talking to you, I realize it’s not without its risks.”
Gonsalves was one of nearly 900 Yale faculty who signed an April letter calling on the university to resist any threats to academic freedom. He says many scientists worry their institutions won’t support them if they speak out. “They are very worried about whether their colleagues, universities, institutions have their back.” Lachance agrees, noting, “Scientists are seeing some major institutions—some very powerful private sector entities—proceeding with caution.”
Several senior scientists who asked not to be named said that even if they could weather any damage, they keep quiet because they worry about the impact of a lost grant on Ph.D. students, laboratory staff, and others. “It’s all the people who depend on you,” said a health science professor who asked not to be named.
There are signs that scientists are starting to feel emboldened. Gonsalves points to Harvard University’s resistance to demands from the Trump administration as a watershed moment. In April, Harvard President Alan Garber sent a letter to administration officials vigorously rejecting a list of demands for federal oversight of university operations. Harvard has since sued to overturn a federal funding freeze on more than $2.2 billion in research grants imposed by the administration—which in turn cut off all future grant funding to the university.
At 62, Gonsalves says he has concluded that any price he pays for speaking out is outweighed by the toll the current administration is taking on the future of scientists and research in the United States. “It’s the next generation we have to protect and care about,” he says. “That’s what keeps me going.”
Scientists might also be realizing that there’s little safety in silence, says Kate Starbird, a University of Washington computer scientist who for years has been targeted by right-wing activists and some Republican members of Congress for her work on digital misinformation. At a recent conference on computer-human interaction hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery, she met scientists whose NSF grants had been canceled even though their research had no obvious connection to conservative hot-button issues. “I just don’t know [that] there’s a lot of wisdom in keeping our heads down anymore,” says Starbird, who has been outspoken for years. “I never had the option of keeping my head down.”
Tromble decided to be more vocal as well after NSF canceled funding for the final year of a 3-year, $5 million grant to study online harassment of experts and design a system to help people who are targeted. “The big risk for us was losing the funding, and now we’ve lost the funding,” Tromble says of her earlier decision to keep a low profile. She is now discussing her research more openly and working to raise philanthropic money to help maintain Expert Voices Together, the program launched in February.
Starbird hopes others will feel emboldened. She fears the scientific community is in danger of missing the chance to shape public perceptions about what the new administration is doing to U.S. research—and she’s taking lessons from her own experience. After the 2020 presidential election, she and fellow researchers were accused of conspiring to censor right-wing claims that the election was stolen from Trump. At first, they decided to ignore the false charges—a missed chance to push back against them before they metastasized, she says. Four years later, she says, “I think we are at risk of missing the golden window.”
It’s my least favorite time of the year: a few weeks after class ends, when I read anonymous online evaluations of my teaching—and, seemingly, everything about me as a person. One student calls my tone of voice “sarcastic and condescending” while another complains I’m “too positive and enthusiastic.” I’ve been judged for my clothing choices—“too casual” if I wear jeans and a sweater, “unnecessarily intimidating” if I wear business attire. Some students have faulted me for assigning too much work, whereas others claim I don’t assign enough for them to learn anything. Even my facial expressions aren’t safe—one evaluation said I didn’t smile enough, another accused me of being “too happy and cheerful.” It takes its toll. But I have come to realize that no matter how hard I try or how much I care, I won’t be universally liked—and that’s OK.
I love teaching and want to empower my students to unlock their full potential. And I have received positive feedback: thoughtful emails, handwritten thank you cards, and gratitude gifts from students who tell me how I’ve inspired them to grow into the best versions of themselves.
But as a new professor I took the negative feedback personally. Every harsh word was a blow to my spirit, leaving me hurt and questioning my worth. For years, I had believed being a good professor meant being universally liked. Each time I read through student evaluations, that goal seemed to slip away.
As I gained experience teaching different classes across different institutions, though, I started to notice patterns—not just in the feedback itself, but in my reactions to it. The same qualities that made me some students’ “best professor” were exactly what others found “annoying” or made my class “a waste of time.” The evaluations were as much about students’ diverse preferences and expectations as about me. I realized I may not be for everyone, but I can keep teaching in a way that is true to my values.
About 10 years ago, a handwritten card from a former student hammered that lesson home. To my shock, they admitted they had once hated my class, and even me. Nothing I could have said back then would have changed their mind, because they were wrestling with their own darkness. Yet in that same note, the student thanked me—for refusing to let them fade into the background, for challenging them even when they pushed back, and for holding onto hope for them when they’d lost it themselves.
Reading those words, I understood that I don’t have to carry the weight of other people’s challenges, opinions, or biases. My focus should be on staying true to myself and being the best professor I can be—not on trying to change how others perceive me. By shifting my focus away from being liked, I can invest my energy into meaningful work.
In learning to take critical feedback less personally, I’ve also developed the ability to distinguish constructive input from gratuitous attacks or irrelevant comments. For example, I have always been dedicated to integrating teamwork into my courses, convinced that it enriches students’ learning by exposing them to diverse perspectives and fostering essential collaboration skills. Yet some students have told me group projects are stressful and unnecessary. Early on, I gave this type of feedback the same weight as comments about my personality, treating both as equally significant reflections on my competence.
With more perspective, experience, and reflection, I have come to realize I don’t need to take all feedback equally seriously. Thoughtfully considering each comment is important, but so is discerning which ones support my growth and effectiveness as an educator and which do not. Comments about my “bubbly” nature, how much I smile, or what I wear do not help me grow, and I can treat them as noise. In contrast, feedback about how team assignments affect students’ stress motivates me to improve—for example, by explaining the value of teamwork and collaboration and designing lower stakes projects.
Now in my 25th year as an academic, I am certain the true legacy of an educator isn’t written in glowing evaluations or universal approval. It’s etched in the lives we touch, the minds we challenge, and the hearts we inspire.
http://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.png00Vincent Barbierhttp://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.pngVincent Barbier2025-05-08 14:52:032025-05-08 14:52:03Teaching evaluations shook my confidence—until I learned to filter the critiques
Amid the grant terminations, program cuts, federal firings, disappearing databases, and myriad other disruptions U.S. science has seen during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s administration, researchers are facing an uncertain future. Those studying hot-button topics such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), vaccines, and transgender health are squarely in the crosshairs, but the turmoil extends much further. The experiences of these five scientists offer a glimpse of the wide-ranging implications for the people who make the science happen.
Equity in jeopardy
N. Burgess/Science
Adana Llanos knows it takes years to build trust, but only seconds to break it. That’s especially true when doing research with people of color: Historical abuses and pervasive racism in health care systems make many hesitant to participate in studies today. The Columbia University epidemiologist has spent nearly 2 decades forging relationships with community partners, laying groundwork that enables her to study nuanced issues such as how neighborhood environments contribute to breast cancer severity in racially diverse populations. “This isn’t just [research] that I decided to do last year,” she says.
But that hard-won trust may now be at risk. On 14 March, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) abruptly terminated two of Llanos’s three grants. One was for a study of how societal factors affect whether a woman receives the best care for cervical cancer and present barriers to treatment; it had enrolled about 200 of its intended 960 participants. Llanos is looking for alternative funding to restart recruitment, and to compensate the members of the community who served as advisers for the work so far. But even if the NIH money were restored, she says, the researchers could miss critical time points to follow up with the women already enrolled. Her other project, the breast cancer study, is similarly on hold.
The terminations were among $400 million in federal funding that President Donald Trump’s administration pulled from Columbia, claiming it has not done enough to combat antisemitism on its campus. All of Columbia’s NIH funds are frozen while the university negotiates with the government, but approximately 400 grants—including Llanos’s two—were permanently canceled.
Llanos says she wasn’t entirely surprised, given Trump’s animosity toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. But she questions whether the administration understands the difference between the workforce diversity programs normally associated with DEI and research into health disparities. By studying how health care disparities contribute to cancer deaths, she says, “we’re improving public health for the entire population of the U.S.”
It’s really hard to just pivot and do something else.
Adana Llanos
Many of the termination letters sent to investigators studying health equity call the research “artificial and non-scientific” and “harm[ing] the health of Americans.” To Llanos, that language is demeaning. “I feel like it’s kind of a personal sort of attack against me, against the work that I’m doing, and against the progress that I would like to make,” says Llanos, who is Black. Scientists of color only make up 30% of NIH research grant recipients.
Llanos says she’s determined to continue the research. “For those of us that are really committed to making strides towards equity, it’s really hard to just pivot and do something else.” But if she can’t find funding soon, she may need to lay off at least two of her lab employees. And the broken promises to collaborators and community partners—though involuntary—may irreparably damage her team’s ability to work with them in the future. “It’ll be hard to get those things back to the way they were,” she says. —Sara Reardon
Goodbye, research dreams
N. Burgess/Science
As a Ph.D. student studying infectious fungal diseases, Katrina Jackson went to all the right conferences, published in all the right journals, and networked with all the right scientists to set herself up for an academic research career. Even the pathogen she chose to study as a postdoc—Coccidioides, which causes the lung disease Valley fever—was a deliberate choice. In 2022, for the first time, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) allocated $4.5 million for research into the rarely studied fungus, which kills thousands of people in the United States each year.
“I thought it would be a really good field to join,” Jackson says. Little is known about why infections can become so severe in some people, which strains are most dangerous to humans, and how the immune system fights the fungus. Work on vaccines is just beginning. “I would have questions for an entire career.” But that path is closing for her.
Just 9 months into her postdoc Jackson learned she would be laid off, alongside three others in the same lab, led by Bridget Barker at Northern Arizona University. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, NIH hasn’t approved future years of funding for the team’s multiyear grant, meaning the money for Jackson’s position will run out in July.
The holdup may reflect turmoil at NIH, which laid off hundreds of its own staff and delayed the meetings in which scientists normally review research proposals. Or perhaps it’s a sign the agency is considering terminating the grant entirely, as it has done to many other projects involving infectious diseases and vaccine development. If the money does come through, Barker says, she’d like Jackson to stay for 2 to 4 more years. Coccidioides is difficult to grow and dangerous to handle, Barker says, and training new people to work with it safely in high-security labs takes time.
It’s like I have to choose between my life and my career.
Katrina Jackson
But the uncertainty is too much to gamble on, Jackson says—especially given reports that President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposal could slash NIH’s budget by 40%. “I’ll just be in the same boat again next year,” she says. So now she’s looking for a new postdoc position in Europe or Canada, which will mean leaving her friends, aging family members, and professional networks behind for at least a few years. “It’s like I have to choose between my life and my career,” she says.
Assuming she finds a position overseas, she probably won’t be able to continue to study Coccidioides, which is only endemic in the Americas, or build her career around Valley fever. “It feels like all of these dreams and hopes I’ve had are getting ripped away from me,” she says. “I’ll make it work, but it’s not what I’ve been working towards.” —Sara Reardon
Data blackout
N. Burgess/Science
Political scientist Andrew Flores may soon lose a major source of the data that have fueled his research for much of the past decade. In 2016 he and other LGBTQ advocates persuaded the Department of Justice (DOJ) to include questions about gender identity on its annual National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The questions allowed Flores, an associate professor at American University, to show that sexual and gender minorities are five times more likely to be victims of violent crimes than the overall U.S. population, and nine times more likely to be targeted for violent hate crimes.
But in March, DOJ announced plans to remove all questions about gender identity from the survey. If that happens, Flores and his colleagues will lose data they rely on to document how the LGBTQ community experiences crime.
Flores says he’s always been interested in politics. But it wasn’t until graduate school that he melded that interest with what he calls “the science part” of political science. He began to study public attitudes toward the LGBTQ community and then shifted to broader questions about sexual orientation and gender identity, including crime victimization.
Flores says he’s often asked whether his research is driven by his identity as a gay Latino man. “Maybe the questions I ask are influenced by who I am,” he says. “But the way I do my data analyses isn’t corrupted or affected by those things. At the end of the day, I’m an empirical researcher, someone who’s just trying to describe the world around me.”
His ability to do that is now at risk. “We’re already very worried about the integrity of federal data sets,” he says, noting that a survey on health-related risk behaviors by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention temporarily went offline after President Donald Trump took office. But, he says, “A bigger concern is what will happen going forward,” including with the NCVS.
We’re already very worried about the integrity of federal data sets.
Andrew Flores
In addition to facing a looming loss of data, he and other researchers are alarmed that Trump has shrunk the federal workforce that manages those surveys and eliminated outside scientific panels that advise agencies on ways to improve their instruments.
One response may be to take matters into their own hands. “A group of us have been looking at maybe doing our own surveys, collecting the key data that are no longer being collected by the federal government,” Flores says.
To do so, they would need funding from private foundations and other groups interested in the issue. But even if the funds materialize, he worries data collected without the imprimatur of the government would not carry the same weight with policymakers or the public. “Federal surveys are still the gold standard.” —Jeffrey Mervis
Ph.D. interrupted
N. Burgess/Science
Barbara Benowitz was excited to finally begin what she hoped would be a long career in academic research. After finishing her bachelor’s in psychology at Gettysburg College, she had spent several years gaining hands-on research experience—first as a post baccalaureate fellow at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, where she investigated the brain mechanisms underlying pain, then as a research technician at the University of Washington studying drug addiction. Last year, when she was accepted to a neuroscience Ph.D. program at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), she was ready to hit the ground running.
Benowitz was midway through her second of three rotations—temporary stints for students to experience various lab environments and research directions before they settle on their home lab for the remainder of their doctoral training—when President Donald Trump took office in January. “A lot of us expected things to go downhill,” Benowitz recalls, “but we didn’t know how.” As the administration began to slash funding for science, leaders at MUSC remained hopeful, with the dean reassuring Benowitz and her fellow students they wouldn’t be affected. But when Benowitz finished her third rotation and began to apply to officially join a lab, she learned that, thanks to delayed and canceled grants, none had the funds to take on new students—leaving Benowitz and many others with no path forward to continue their graduate training. “I have no place to go,” Benowitz says.
The university is currently offering Benowitz the chance to do a fourth rotation, which might help her find a home. But because funding cuts have affected so many labs, there’s no guarantee this option will pan out either. Some newer principal investigators, who have startup funds that aren’t as tied up in federal grants as those of their more established colleagues, have suddenly found themselves overwhelmed by applications. “We’re all fighting for one, maybe two spots,” Benowitz says. “It’s kind of like a vicious cycle of uncertainty for everyone.”
I don’t think I can do a career where there’s no future.
Barbara Benowitz
The Trump administration’s cuts have also hit Benowitz beyond her own professional path. Her father—who worked at NIH as a science writer and editor for more than a decade—recently learned his entire department is being disbanded. He was close to retirement, but now instead is scrambling to find a new job, which could mean packing up and moving to a different state. “That just puts a lot of strain on my family,” Benowitz says.
As for her own plans, Benowitz would love to remain in academia. But the experiences of the past months have shaken her confidence in the future of academic science—and left her pondering a transition to industry. “I don’t think I can do a career where there’s no future.” —Phie Jacobs
Fed up with whiplash
N. Burgess/Science
Baffling. Jarring. Draining. That’s how entomologist Brian Lovett describes the experience of being abruptly fired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in February, unexpectedly rehired 10 days later, and then faced with looming layoffs again. It all led him to reluctantly take an offer of deferred resignation last month. The turmoil and callous treatment make him fear for the future of federally supported science. Government scientists, he says, “are canaries in the coal mine for American research.”
Lovett’s introduction to USDA came as a Ph.D. student, when he learned about the agency’s decades-old collection of insect-killing fungi. The fungi promised an environmentally friendly way to control agricultural pests, and they also raised intriguing questions about evolution and ecology. Lovett was hooked. He went on to an academic postdoc, but when a principal investigator position opened up at the USDA research unit that keeps and works with the fungus collection, “I jumped at it,” Lovett recalls.
Not long after President Donald Trump took office this year, he recalls a mounting sense of foreboding at the unit. On 14 February, he received an email firing him; he was still a probationary employee, and therefore less protected than longer serving federal employees. He couldn’t return to the lab to speak to his group or help them shut down the experiments.
Lovett found new supervisors for his staff and started to hunt for jobs immediately. But 10 days later, he learned he had been reinstated. The email from USDA human resources had gone to his government email, which he could no longer access, but his supervisor forwarded him the message. Eventually some 5000 USDA employees got their jobs back, some after the federal Merit Systems Protection Board paused the firings and others after a court ruling weeks later.
[Government scientists] are canaries in the coal mine for American research.
Brian Lovett
But it wasn’t the old job. Like federal employees across the government, Lovett was told by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to email a list of five accomplishments every week. He worked to get job extensions for lab members whose jobs might be in jeopardy, including a postdoc who told him, “I don’t know if I’ll be here next week,” as she handed over sequencing files and scripts so her work could continue if she was abruptly let go. He expected he, too, would be a target again, in the inevitable next round.
Deferred resignation, which included pay until 30 September, seemed preferable. He will remain on leave until his termination, giving him time to look for other jobs in research—although he suspects that with so many federal scientists laid off, competition will be fierce. A role in the policy world or advocacy is appealing, he says. “I think we’re in a moment where people need to act.” —Erik Stokstad
http://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.png00Vincent Barbierhttp://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.pngVincent Barbier2025-05-02 15:59:262025-05-02 15:59:26U.S. scientists’ lives and careers are being upended. Here are five of their stories
Friday night a few weeks ago, as I was finally slipping into much needed sleep, my phone buzzed. It was another student whose career plans had been disrupted by recent upheavals in the U.S. research landscape. They asked a question I was all too familiar with: How do I get through this uncertainty to get back to my carefully laid plans? Wrestling with that question had defined my career. Twenty years ago, I had a plan. I was living in Louisiana, completing my Ph.D. in geography, and about to begin law school, planning to combine both specialties to protect human health. It took every ounce of me to study for the LSAT and apply to law school while writing my dissertation and teaching, and it had paid off. Then, on 29 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall.
You may remember the jarring foreground images, but you probably missed the background: people hurrying in and out of the Emergency Operations Center at all hours, working to map the devastation and answer questions such as where is the flooding, how deep is it, and how can we get these people off this roof? I was one of them. My law school had closed for the foreseeable future. So, when the geography department circulated an email requesting geospatial support, I had said yes. I saw it as a temporary detour, a chance to use my skills to help the community.
But weeks became months and law school had yet to reopen. I returned to the lab where I had been a graduate student, now as a research associate. I felt aimless and disoriented. Mapping environmental change after a disaster many people had already forgotten, I felt I had lost my identity. I stayed in this limbo for about a year, waiting to get through the uncertainty so I could get back to my plans.
Then, during routine field mapping, a woman walked over, looked at my map, and showed me it was incomplete. I was missing the underlying human factors, which I could never have known as an outsider. Although I could map vegetation overgrowth, for example, I had missed how that visible process intersected with the community’s varied uses of different areas—as meeting spots, recreation areas, and more. That moment redrew my map, literally and for the rest of my career.
Law school finally reopened, offering me a chance to get back on my original track. But the chance encounter stayed with me. I couldn’t deny my new fascination: studying how people can be environmental sensors and developing systems to harness this knowledge. The idea of abandoning my long-held plans scared me. I grieved for my hard work and sacrifices. I cried in sadness and screamed in frustration and ate too much ice cream. Then, I chose the unknown.
I became a research assistant professor. For several years I pivoted between teaching-focused and research-focused appointments, which made it difficult to build momentum. But I did not look back. I got married and had a baby and strapped that baby to my chest while field mapping. Eventually, I became tenure track. Now, I’m an associate professor, doing work I love.
As an academic, I had always talked about the cool science I’m able to do, never about how I got here. But then, that baby grew into a teenager struggling with perfectionism. Teachers advised me to tell my daughter about my own struggles, and the unexpected turns my life had taken. When I finished, she smiled, hugged me, and said hearing about my messy humanness made her feel more normal. I wondered what would happen if I opened up to my colleagues in science?
I said nothing for another year; I’m uncomfortable admitting my struggles. But then a colleague experienced a devastating, life- and career-changing event. She wanted to talk. So, one bitter cold morning, we tucked ourselves into a corner seat of our favorite bakery and I told her about how my plans had changed, too. I was open about how unmoored I had been—professionally, emotionally, financially, intellectually. I spared no detail. She smiled, hugged me, and said it made her feel more normal.
I now start my classes by saying science is a human endeavor, with the uniquely human parts making us stronger—if we let them. My students in turn often share their stories of plans changing because of illnesses, caregiving, traumas, and more. We smile, hug, and carry on—all feeling more normal.
http://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.png00Vincent Barbierhttp://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.pngVincent Barbier2025-05-01 14:37:032025-05-01 14:37:03Abandoning my long-held career plans was painful—but I love where I landed
When Michelle Koplitz began studying biotechnology as an undergraduate at the Rochester Institute of Technology, she had dreams of one day becoming a doctor. As a Deaf student, however, she didn’t have many role models or mentors in the field who could support her. Still hoping to work in health care, she ended up pursuing a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. And although Koplitz looks back on that program with fondness, being the only Deaf researcher in a group of hearing colleagues was jarring. “I felt very alone and isolated,” she recalls.
Koplitz knew that, for a Ph.D. program, she would need a community again. She also knew she would find that back in Rochester, New York, which is thought to have one of, if not the, largest per capita populations of deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the United States. When Koplitz returned to the area to pursue her doctorate, she also had the opportunity to plug into a group of programs known collectively as the Deaf Scientists Pipeline. Unlike traditional degree programs, this initiative—a long-standing collaboration between the University of Rochester/University of Rochester Medical Center (UR/URMC) and the Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf (RIT/NTID)—provides tailored support for students at every stage of their academic journey, from high school all the way through postdoctoral training. It’s the only pipeline of its kind in the world.
But in early April, Koplitz got the news she’d been dreading: Four out five National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants supporting the pipeline had been terminated, and the fifth was in danger of being cut as well. Collectively, the programs estimate they will lose about $3.6 million in future support that was committed in the most recent award and renewal cycles—a drop in the bucket compared with the total NIH budget, but absolutely essential to keep the pipeline running. “This is a real step back,” Koplitz says. “I’m afraid that we’re going to lose the little bit of progress that we’ve made.”
According to official termination notices, the reason given for the cuts is changes in priorities at NIH and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “NIH is dedicated to restoring our agency to its tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science,” an HHS spokesperson said in response to further questions. “As we begin to Make America Healthy Again, we are prioritizing research to identify the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic.”
The Deaf Scientists Pipeline started in 2013 with the Rochester Bridges to the Doctorate Program, which helps students gain the experience necessary to become candidates for doctoral degree programs. That program, which NIH had continuously funded with more than $4.7 million in support to date, has now been terminated 3 years early; the program is estimated to lose nearly $900,000 in future funding. The Rochester Postdoc Partnership (RPP), which began in 2015 and had received about $5 million to date, has also been canceled—1 year early. The same fate befell the Initiative for Maximizing Student Development, which began just 2 years ago to serve doctoral students and was initially slated to run until 2028. Each of these latter programs is expected to lose out on more than $1 million.
“Right when we are seeing the pipeline really taking off with multiple graduates contributing back to it, it is being destroyed,” says Wyatte Hall, who studies language acquisition and deprivation in Deaf children and serves as a mentor to Koplitz, who works in his lab. Hall was the first graduate of the RPP, and he currently serves as co-director of the Future Deaf Scientists program, which helps empower Deaf high school students to explore careers in science and medicine. This component of the pipeline was established just last year under a grant set to run until 2029. Although that funding—totaling just over $250,000—is still officially in place, Hall believes it is only a matter of time before this program is also terminated.
According to a statement from RIT/NTID and UR/URMC, the universities are exploring avenues for appeal, but it’s unclear whether those efforts will be successful. As for other options to restore the pipeline, Hall says, the Deaf community is small and lacks economic power. “There’s likely nothing we can turn to after these cuts to keep the programs,” he says. “The idea that private funding will step in is not something that has been historically realistic for our community.” Even if funding eventually is restored, he adds, it will likely take decades to rebuild.
“If it wasn’t for these programs that are part of the pipeline, I wouldn’t have gotten to where I am now,” says biomedical scientist Sara Blick-Nitko, who researches cancer treatments as a postdoc at UR. “Growing up, I never had a Deaf mentor. I never knew another Deaf scientist.” She was introduced to the pipeline when she was seeking more research experience after her bachelor’s degree in order to pursue a Ph.D. The bridges program got her into lab rotations and gave her experience with networking and presenting her work at conferences. For her postdoctoral training, she relied on funding from the RPP.
One of the most valuable aspects of the pipeline, Blick-Nitko explains, was the financial support for accessibility services, including closed captioning and interpreters in the lab and at conferences. Not all American Sign Language interpreters are qualified to translate complex research topics, for example, and some scientific terms don’t have standardized ASL signs—although some Deaf scientists are working to change that. “It makes me sound like I don’t know my stuff when I present my science with an interpreter that is not aware of science or my work,” Blick-Nitko says.
People who participate in the pipeline often end up coming back and contributing, Blick-Nitko says, with some alumni serving as mentors to younger students: “You kind of go full circle.” Koplitz, for example, works with students in the undergraduate portion of the pipeline, founded in 2017. “I really enjoyed meeting these younger students, and that was just really cool to see how motivated and how interested they are,” she says. “It was also kind of bittersweet, because I realized I didn’t have this type of support as an undergrad student myself.” Now that the grant—originally slated to run until 2029—has been terminated, that program is expected to lose out on just under $500,000 worth of future support.
After President Donald Trump took office in January, some students and researchers involved in the pipeline began to worry their programs would be targeted because of executive orders attacking initiatives related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA). “I saw the warning signs,” says Athena Willis, a neuroscience postdoc at UR. Willis has been particularly impacted by the grant terminations, because there is no alternative funding available for her to continue. Others in the pipeline are also struggling to find alternative sources of support. Koplitz, for example, initially hoped to apply for an NIH individual fellowship. But the diversity supplement for that program has also been cut—one of many accessibility services that have taken a hit as a result of the Trump administration’s attacks on DEIA.
These attacks have outraged many researchers involved the Deaf Scientists Pipeline, who argue that DEIA efforts are essential for the Deaf community—and that dismantling these initiatives undermines science as a whole. “Individuals with disabilities have a lot to contribute,” Blick-Nitko says. “We have a lot of unique perspectives we bring to the world.”
http://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.png00Vincent Barbierhttp://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.pngVincent Barbier2025-05-01 13:33:452025-05-01 13:33:45Crucial training pipeline for Deaf scientists dismantled by NIH funding cuts
It’s 5:25 a.m. on a Thursday and my alarm goes off. I sluggishly get up from bed, add several layers of clothing, and make my way toward the chilly River Cam for my first ever race. As I get closer to the boathouse, doubt and fear start to bubble up. Can I really do this? But when my paddle touches the water, a calmness washes over me. I take it one stroke at a time; if I mess up, I just breathe and keep going. The mindset I’ve developed as a rower keeps me focused and in control—and as we zip down the river, I realize it’s helped me regain my confidence as a scientist, too.
As a child, I was convinced that a career in global health was for me. I dreamt of becoming a doctor and biomedical researcher, envisioning myself as a sort of Black Lara Croft, fearless and daring—except instead of searching for artifacts, I’d create groundbreaking cures and treat patients all around the world.
But as the years progressed, my dream seemed increasingly unattainable. During college, I was one of the only Black students in my STEM courses. It was hard to see myself in a field in which so few people from my background were represented.
As a first-generation student, I also struggled to find guidance on how to reach my career goal. Unlike many of my peers, I did not have family members or connections who were doctors or scientists. I was often told my dream was too ambitious: I wanted to become both a neuroimmunology researcher and a neurosurgeon, helping people in low- and middle-income countries. But my undergraduate advisers were skeptical and suggested I focus on just one field of study.
These experiences shook my confidence and left me questioning my plans. Even after I started my Ph.D., I often felt I didn’t belong there. And I was plagued with doubts about the two massive projects I had taken on. I felt so overwhelmed by everything I would have to do over the next 3 years that I struggled to even get started.
But things changed after I started rowing.
I initially joined my college’s boat club as a way to fully immerse myself in the student experience and develop a community away from home. It seemed like a fun and exciting new opportunity—and I soon found it to be an empowering one, too.
Within a couple months of starting to row, I’d found a new level of confidence.
Jasmine Gabriel Hughes
University of Cambridge
Rowing suffers from the same lack of diversity as biomedical research, with very few Black women rowers at my university. When I joined the boat club, I was nervous I would stand out or the rowing community wouldn’t accept me—the same feeling I experienced in science. But despite my initial fears, I was embraced by my fellow rowers, who not only gave me support and guidance to improve my technique, but also made me feel appreciated and valued. As a result, when I’m having my doubts about belonging in science, I now reflect on the fact I’m already doing something I once thought would be impossible for me.
Rowing also helped me develop discipline and a new approach for tackling difficult tasks. At first, I felt overwhelmed by what seemed like unattainable goals, such as rowing nonstop for 2 kilometers in less than 8 minutes. But I realized that by breaking these goals down into smaller steps, I was able to set mini-milestones that were much less intimidating and more feasible.
I began to use a similar strategy in my Ph.D.: By viewing my projects as a series of small goals, they became much more manageable. During the process of designing my first lab experiment, for instance, I started to stress over the complexity of all the procedures involved. But instead of giving in to the fear of being inadequate, I began to focus on how I could make sure each step was successful. Within a couple months of starting to row, I’d found a new level of confidence—both on the water and in the lab.
On that early Thursday morning on the river, I’m so focused on my strokes that I’m surprised when a loud blowhorn goes off. As I catch my breath, it starts to dawn on me that I’ve completed my first race. And suddenly, my future career as physician-scientist finally begins to seem attainable, too.
http://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.png00Vincent Barbierhttp://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.pngVincent Barbier2025-04-24 14:20:222025-04-24 14:20:22How I regained my confidence as a scientist through rowing
In their latest intervention to address sexual misconduct in the sciences, the National Science Foundation (NSF) earlier this week launched a crisis helpline for researchers who have experienced sexual harassment, sexual assault, or stalking. The NSF Safer Science Helpline will provide people in the NSF community with 24/7 one-on-one crisis intervention support and can be accessed via text, phone, or online chat. It’s an expansion of a helpline launched in 2023—the first of its kind for a U.S. science agency or institution—for members of the U.S. Antarctic Program, which has been plagued by harassment.
Providing such resources is an important step, says C.K. Gunsalus, a research ethics expert at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Still, “It doesn’t prevent future issues or recurrence.”
In response to the report, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan established the Sexual Assault and Harassment Prevention and Response (SAHPR) program, which led the creation of the Antarctica hotline—in collaboration with the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), an antisexual violence nonprofit. The current expansion replaces the Antarctica helpline and extends those services to all people in the NSF research community.
The resource “helps to advance NSF’s efforts to prevent and effectively respond to sexual assault, sexual harassment and/or stalking,” says Renée Ferranti, special assistant to the director at SAHPR. The service will be operated by RAINN through a contract with NSF.
Visitors to the helpline will receive resources “tailored to the NSF research community,” says Jessica St. Germaine, director of consulting services at RAINN. This differentiates the NSF helpline from RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Helpline. NSF won’t be involved in the distribution of resources when visitors call the line, and the support they receive will be fully confidential. “RAINN will provide NSF aggregate usage data only,” Ferranti says, though she didn’t go into detail about how those data would be used. “No information about the communication will be shared with NSF and the helpline does not collect any personally identifiable information.”
Still, Gunsalus notes people may be hesitant to use the helpline under the current political climate. “Building sufficient trust that it gets used may be a challenge in our current environment, as will assuring its continued availability.”
Vicki Magley, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut who co-authored a 2018 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report about sexual harassment says the hotline could help people work through possible incidents of gender harassment, a form of harassment that involves sexist and sexualized insults meant to degrade people; the NASEM report highlighted this as the most ubiquitous but least understood form of sexual harassment. Because gender harassment can lead to more egregious forms of harassment, intervening early could have a substantial impact, Magley says. “Any kind of empowerment that encourages people to articulate what’s happening to them is helpful.”
At the same time, Magley wonders about the future of the helpline, given the cuts underway at NSF. “My primary concern would be that the current administration won’t allow such a hotline to continue and won’t continue funding efforts that would support such a hotline,” she says.
http://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.png00Vincent Barbierhttp://postdocinusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logo-PostdocInUSA-300x165.pngVincent Barbier2025-04-18 15:28:112025-04-18 15:28:11Sexual misconduct helpline offers support for NSF community
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