From ScienceMag:

Last fall, Keith Maggert’s grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to extend his work in chromosome biology and gene regulation received a score from reviewers that put it over the threshold for funding. Final approval was due in February, but turmoil at NIH delayed it until late May, leaving him with a gap in supporting his fly genetics lab at the University of Arizona (UA).

This week, however, he received $37,619 in short-term support from another source: his own university. The money will allow him to continue to pay two graduate students and buy needed supplies. Maggert is one of seven UA faculty members to date who have benefited from the university’s new “bridge” program, designed for those whose research has been disrupted by the wave of spending cuts and freezes in grantmaking by President Donald Trump and his administration.

Several U.S. universities are taking similar steps to assist their researchers in dire straits. They’re experimenting with different flavors—for example, some are helping faculty reimagine their research programs while others try to ensure their doctoral students are able to complete their degrees. Most aren’t sharing how much money they are committing to these efforts, though wealthier institutions probably can do more to keep labs afloat. And all bridge programs are likely to be oversubscribed.

Still, the current moment calls for action, administrators say. “This is unprecedented and uncharted waters,” says Wendy Hensel, president of the University of Hawaii (UH) System, which has launched a bridge program focused on students in labs whose grants have been cut. “During the COVID pandemic, we received significant support from the federal and state government. The difference here is, there will be no one riding to the rescue.”

Bridge programs aren’t new. Research universities historically have used them when faculty members hit a bump in the road in winning federal grants. But the series of land mines the Trump administration has detonated since 20 January, including the dismantling of several agencies, decrees banning certain types of research, and the threats to some universities’ entire research portfolios, raise a new set of challenges.

As universities seek ways to sustain their researchers, Yale School of Medicine is among the most generous. It is making an unspecified amount of money available, on a competitive basis, to faculty members whose existing NIH grant has been “precipitously” terminated or whose pending proposal has been frozen. “The idea is to preserve our investment in individual faculty as well as in their research, and frankly, to preserve the investment of taxpayers as well,” says the medical school’s dean, Nancy Brown. Faculty can request up to 90% of the amount being blocked, according to a notice posted when the program was announced on 18 February.

Before submitting a proposal, the notice says, applicants must consult with colleagues on how best to “reimagine” their research. The idea is to help faculty “pivot,” Brown says, either to a topic the government is more likely to support or to a more receptive federal agency. “It has to be a bridge to somewhere,” she explains.

Other institutions are more constrained in responding to faculty requests. As Vassilis Syrmos, vice president for research and innovation at UH, puts it, “We don’t have the financial capacity to be a sponsor of the type of research in which we excel.”

Instead, UH is focusing on the graduate students of faculty members who have lost grants, with help from the UH Foundation, which raises money for the university from private donors. “Of course we care about our faculty and staff, but our primary obligation is to our students,” Hensel says. “So priority number one is to find an alternative source of funding that allows them to continue to progress in their research and their degree program.”

Syrmos is hoping the foundation will raise $500,000 over the next 6 to 12 months to rescue as many as a quarter of the 750 UH graduate students in science and engineering who he estimates will be affected by the cutbacks. The university has already received termination and stop-work orders for 32 projects ranging from community-based health research to oceanography, a number he expects to grow.

At the University of Massachusetts (UMass), students are also likely to be key beneficiaries. Michael Malone, UMass’s vice president for research, says he expects requests to pay graduate student stipends will soak up most of the money set aside for its bridge program. He says UMass is also prepared to support requests for additional equipment and supplies if needed for a student to complete their doctoral work.

Most universities with bridge programs have set limits on how much they will contribute. UMass and the University of Michigan both require the faculty member’s department to match the university’s contribution. At UA, Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, senior vice president for research and innovation, says the university wants its faculty to remain productive despite the Trump administration–ordered cuts, but won’t support researchers proposing to move into a new area. And if the federal government reopens the spigot, most institutions will require faculty to return any bridge funding they receive.

Columbia University, where the Trump administration has put hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research grants in jeopardy, declined to say whether it plans any type of competititive bridge program. But in a 4 April letter to the community, acting President Claire Shipman said the university “has made a near-term commitment to pay the salaries and stipends of those affected, as we work to restore funding and consider alternative funding mechanisms.”

An institution’s endowment may seem like an obvious source of alternative funding; Columbia’s amounted to $14.8 billion last year. But college presidents are loath to tap the principal. And university administrators insist that most of the earnings from that pot of money are already earmarked for other purposes, notably student financial aid and construction of new research facilities.

Instead, most universities are turning to the federal funds they already receive to reimburse them for providing the facilities and administrative support needed to do research. But those funds, known as indirect costs, are also under attack from the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, who have accused universities of accumulating a “slush fund” by overcharging the government in negotiating individual payment rates.

In February, NIH proposed to slash those rates, potentially depriving grantee institutions of billions of dollars annually. Last week, after a federal judge permanently blocked the move, the government appealed her ruling to a higher court.

The dispute may be one reason most institutions have declined to announce how much they intend to spend on bridge programs. If universities with uncapped bridge programs like Yale’s are to fully meet the demand from faculty in the months to come, that could come to millions of dollars. “Nobody wants to look like they have extra money lying around to support faculty and graduate students if the government shuts down their research,” says one university administrator who requested anonymity to speak freely about the sensitive issue.

To respond more quickly to the current crisis, Syrmos says UH may increase the share of its indirect cost payments that go into a central pot, now 25%, to boost the potential budget of its bridge program. But he says UH will never be able to make up for the missing federal support. Operating the university’s research vessel costs from $35,000 to $50,000 a day, he notes, meaning a 2-week cruise could eat up the entire sum being raised by the foundation.

“Our bridge program is just a way to provide them with a soft landing while we try to figure out how to solve the problem in the long run,” Syrmos says. “And that could require a new business model.”

Read More

From ScienceMag:

“How does one become so knowledgeable?” I asked myself while watching a renowned professor give a lecture to a large audience. I admired everything about her: the revolutionary discoveries she had made, her passionate tone of voice, the clarity of her explanations. My research seemed so trivial in comparison and my skills so limited. As a postdoc entering my fifth year, I knew I was expected to start applying for faculty positions. However, I felt far short of the level of competence and confidence needed to become a professor. “What will I do with my life?” I thought. “I will never be good enough for science.”

When I completed a doctoral program in mathematical biology, I wasn’t sure where I saw my career going. I considered working for banks or other companies. But satisfying my curiosity and thirst for knowledge as a postdoc seemed way more exciting than any other job could be.

There was something addictive about research. I could lie awake for hours trying to understand my results or thinking about how to perfect my figures or craft the perfect introduction for a paper. Mathematical biology enabled me to satisfy my broader curiosity, as the computational skills I was acquiring could be used to tackle problems spanning the natural and social sciences. So, after my first postdoc, I started a new one, and later, a third.

The problem was what to do afterward. When people would ask me, “What would you like to do next?” and I had no answer to give, I tried not to worry. But my peers all seemed certain they wanted to become professors one day. They seemed to find every scientific conversation fascinating. I liked talking about science, too, but I would often have preferred to talk about books, hiking, or traveling. They were convinced their research was going to make a difference in the world. My research was fun, but I doubted it could ever be useful. They asked sharp questions in seminars. I could not get rid of the feeling that I was just pretending.

It was only during my third postdoc that I experienced a change of mindset. It happened after I volunteered to co-lead a group of scientists writing a perspective piece about what future research was needed in our field. After reading the first draft, the senior investigators on the team commented that, although the piece still needed some significant changes, it was suitable for submission to a high-impact journal.

Maybe I needed to value my own skills and expertise a little more highly?

• Maria Martignoni
• Georgia Institute of Technology

Up to then, I had focused on publishing in discipline-specific journals. So I replied skeptically, saying that although I appreciated their optimism, such journals were out of my reach. They insisted we could do it. “We will follow your lead,” they said.

This statement awakened something in me. Clearly, they saw me as knowledgeable and competent, and as someone with important things to say. Maybe I needed to value my own skills and expertise a little more highly?

I decided to do my best to improve the article—spending more than a year reading dozens of papers, leading group discussions, and editing the article. The process was long and tedious, and we’re still not sure where it’ll be published. But the more time I dedicated to it, the more knowledgeable I felt, and the more my confidence grew.

Leading the writing of that article made me realize I have become an expert in my field. I now know I can make a difference in science, and I finally feel it is the right path for me. I’m grateful my mentors never stopped believing in me and allowed me to stick around long enough to gain confidence in my abilities. Now, I feel ready to apply for tenure-track positions.

When students ask me for advice, I tell them that one does not need to have a clear life plan to belong in science. Many scientists know from the start that they want to be academic researchers. But for others the path unfolds gradually, with spurts of doubt and uncertainty along the way. In a way, that’s fitting. As researchers we are explorers, and part of our mission involves finding our way without always knowing where we are going.

Read More

From ScienceMag:

The email came 2 weeks after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras and my honors program wanted to know whether I would be interested in an opportunity to temporarily continue my studies elsewhere. Brown University, a school I’d never heard of, was offering 30 of us the chance to take classes there while our university recovered. Amid the devastating news of thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damage to the island, the offer seemed too good to be true. However, my family encouraged me to go, and soon I found myself on a private flight to Rhode Island. The hurricane had blown me off my planned course, and set me on an unexpected path toward a Ph.D.

I started college dreaming of becoming a forensic pathologist. I wanted to help give a voice to those who could no longer speak. I would need a medical degree, so I enrolled as a premed biology major and focused on my first-year coursework. Research wasn’t on my radar, partly because such opportunities in Puerto Rico were limited.

The following year, the hurricane hit. I felt oddly optimistic before the storm—thinking we’d get a few days off and life would go on, just as it always had. Instead, the Category 5 monster leveled our communities, leaving people without power or water for months. Days passed before we could reconnect with loved ones. When I finally saw my grandmother, she hugged me tightly, crying, “I was so scared something happened to you.”

Unexpected challenges can create opportunities for growth and redirection.

• Melanie Ortiz Alvarez De La Campa
• Brown University

On the flight north, which was chartered by Brown, everything felt surreal—leather seats, fresh fruit, and, after landing, a reception in a mansion. I felt conflicted. Here I was, feeling joy and wonder at a new experience, while everyone back home struggled.

Brown set us up with classes, books, dorm rooms, and funds to purchase winter clothes. It was in one of those classes, an introductory biology course, that my trajectory began to shift. I was captivated by the professor’s lecture and, on a whim, reached out after class. To my surprise, he immediately offered me a research position in his lab.

I was assigned to work on a project that involved modeling how climate change could alter the distributions of plants across North America. The research opened my eyes to the important work scientists were doing to address urgent, relevant questions.

I began to see a path in science beyond medicine, and at Brown I had the resources to follow it. I had direct access to faculty, state-of-the-art research facilities, and a supportive academic environment. As the academic year came to a close, I stayed on to do a summer research program, where I fell in love with microbiology.

I began to think a Ph.D. was what I wanted. Yet, despite the excitement, I felt doubtful, anxious, and guilty. I struggled to reconcile my new opportunities with the devastation back home. I also worried about leaving behind my dream of medicine to pursue a path that I was excited about but that might not lead to a job in Puerto Rico.

Before I left Brown, my summer research mentor told me, “If you ever want to pursue a Ph.D., I’d be honored to mentor you.” After I confided in him about my conflicted feelings on the future, he replied: “There’s nothing better than doing what excites you.” The words felt like permission to follow my passion.

Back in Puerto Rico, I spent my final years doing all I could to get myself admitted to graduate school. And 3 years later, I returned to Brown—this time as a Ph.D. student. Fittingly, my first weekend back brought a hurricane to Rhode Island. It felt oddly like home.

Now that I’m in the fourth year of my Ph.D., my journey has taught me that unexpected challenges can create opportunities for growth and redirection. My pivot from medicine to research wasn’t a loss, but an acknowledgement of where I could have the greatest impact while still doing something that excites me.

Read More

From ScienceMag:

View more

Earlier this month, part of a Ph.D. thesis went viral on social media. It wasn’t a bizarre artificial intelligence–generated figure, or a scintillating methods description, or a result that could revolutionize medicine; it was a twist on the standard acknowledgements section. The excerpt, written by a graduate student named Rachel Los, featured a page of anti-acknowledgments, offering her heartfelt “no thanks” to everyone who dissuaded, intimidated, or made inappropriate comments to her as she worked toward her degree: colleagues who had expressed skepticism about her ability to pursue science as a woman; did or said unsolicited icky, creepy things; or otherwise made comments that, in her words, “shattered my confidence” and “made me feel like I do not belong in science.”

It clearly hit a nerve: The posts have been viewed thousands of times, with many proposing their own anti-acknowledgments—and many more lamenting that, in 2025, we’re still fighting some of the same battles against harassment and discouragement that should have been obsolete decades ago.

I was struck by how Los subverted a traditional—and sometimes boring and boilerplate—component of a thesis to speak her truth. Graduate students inherently have so little power that the ability to deviate from tradition in the prologue to your thesis—a document that, let’s face it, you’re primarily writing for yourself—is a legitimate flex. Your dissertation is your dissertation, and though the scholarly part still needs to meet academic standards, the decorative bits are yours to control. An anti-acknowledgments section—right smack at the beginning of vellum-bound scholarly research, printed on nice paper and enshrined in the university library—has impressive heft.

Some may argue that such a section has no place in a formal dissertation—that it’s unprofessional, or ungrateful. And certainly, it’s nice to have a true acknowledgements section—for the people who truly contributed positively.

But, let’s face it: A lot of traditional acknowledgements sections are phoned in. Honestly, I couldn’t remember who I might have thanked in my thesis. When I recently pulled my dissertation down from a shelf in my bedroom and opened it for the first time in years, I found that first I thanked my adviser, because that’s what you do. Then I thanked my thesis committee, because it seemed prudent to commend them in advance for a favorable decision. Next up was my oral exam committee from 5 years earlier (because why not), then all of our collaborators at other institutions. A page and a half in, I started thanking other members of my lab who had contributed to the project, then everyone else in the lab who hadn’t contributed to the project (because why not), then the department itself, then our funders, and finally my family and “the 261 mice who gave their lives for this project.” Mercifully, the acknowledgments ended there, rather than continuing to list the name of each mouse.

I wrote this section for two main reasons: I wanted to thank everyone who had assisted me, and more importantly, I had seen previous students write this section.

But if you find yourself in the lucky position of finishing up your dissertation soon (because the science job market is awesome right now), maybe you’ll want to do something different. Maybe you’re thinking of adding an anti-acknowledgments section, to celebrate your success—no thanks to the unhelpful people and events along the way. If that idea appeals to you, you probably have some ideas for that section. But if you’re looking for inspiration, here are some suggestions for the only page of your thesis that you might post on social media:

• No thank you to the kindergarten teacher who said I’d never amount to anything. Check it out, dummy: I’m getting an advanced degree, and I got to eat all that paste.
• No thank you to the people I tried to date who never, ever understood why my work schedule wasn’t a typical work schedule and why I sometimes just had to go to the lab at midnight. “Why don’t you tell your adviser it’s not reasonable to work at midnight?” they would ask. See below.
• No thank you to the adviser who made me work at midnight, yet at the same time made me feel like I couldn’t ask to not work at midnight.
• No thank you to the snackless seminars. Stupid seminars! Have snacks! Why wouldn’t you have snacks? What, I ask you, is the point of the seminar otherwise?
• No thank you to the politics that made science harder and less impactful. No thank you to the reorganizations and funding hiccups that no one wanted, and most of all, no thank you to every time we had to avoid the simplest, most logical way of doing something just so we didn’t have to annoy someone in a position of power.
• No thank you to the mice who died before the experiment was over. I tried, guys, but seriously, you’ve got to hold up your end.
• No thank you to anyone who said, either implicitly or explicitly, that a good scientist has no outside interests. You fools: I never said I was a good
• Finally, a big no thank you to the part of myself that absorbed and dwelled on every negative comment, every failure, every feeling of hopelessness. You’re the part of me that sat in every classroom and showed up in the lab every day certain that I was the only impostor in a room of smart people. I know you’re a natural part of being human, and I know you’ll always be with me, but as I progress in my career as a scientist, I look forward to bidding you farewell—or at least seeing you a little less often.

Anti-acknowledgments probably aren’t destined to become a standard part of the dissertation—goodness knows there are already enough graduation requirements without a new expectation that you recount your misery.

But for those who feel strongly enough that they want to put their dissatisfaction on record, thank you—an actual thank you—to Rachel Loh for sharing her own.

Read More

From ScienceMag:

Five years ago, I got the email I had hoped for. “We are very pleased to offer you admission to the Neuroscience Ph.D. program,” it read, as confetti in the school’s colors rained down the screen. My parents didn’t have college degrees. I didn’t meet someone with a Ph.D. until college—and now I was going to be one, training in my first-choice program. My friend and I decided to celebrate by making some homemade mac ’n cheese, and we headed to the grocery store for milk. But there was none: The date was 13 March 2020, and COVID-19 had been declared a pandemic 2 days before. Now, I’m nearing graduation in another time of crisis—hoping to draw strength from the lessons I learned the first time around.

My graduate school experience was not what I expected. Soon after starting, I received another email: “Nonmedical students, including Ph.D. students, are not considered essential workers.” I wouldn’t be able to attend in-person classes or meetings with professors, or work in certain lab spaces. Orientation events, where I should have been getting to know my fellow classmates, would be online. In my new apartment, far from friends or family, the sounds of traffic and the birds chirping in the bushes were my only company—those noises, and the many houseplants my father had lovingly carried up two flights of stairs for me. I felt anxious and alone, but found consolation by immersing myself in rigorous and exciting neuroscience.

When I feel myself drifting toward despair, I think about what I learned during the pandemic.

• Paige Nicklas
• University of Rochester

At the same time, I began to experience dissonance between my personal and professional lives. I watched as family and friends posted on social media saying the virus was not dangerous or spreading misinformation about the vaccine—even while a loved one was hospitalized with COVID-19. At first I felt helpless. But when I began to share how I was feeling with my classmates, I learned many were having similar experiences. And I realized I had both the capability and responsibility to make change—by connecting with scientists and nonscientists alike.

In addition to building community with my fellow scientists, I started to take science communication classes, attend workshops, and get involved in outreach. Writing science news articles, visiting local elementary schools and museums, improving my data visualizations—anything that helped connect me with nonscientists, I would do it. The follow-up questions, feedback, and personal anecdotes I heard energized me. I envisioned a career dedicated to both innovative research and imaginative science communication. I was going to get my Ph.D., and then do everything I could to help prevent the confusion felt during the COVID-19 pandemic from repeating itself.

Now, it’s not just the public that is bewildered, but the research community, questioning the future of science after rapid-fire actions by President Donald Trump’s administration against scientists and universities. Last month, another email popped up on my phone, from my institution’s leadership: “While awaiting further guidance from federal agencies … we remain deeply committed to the well-being of the University community and to our values as we pursue our research, health care, and education missions.” It may have been a wellintended statement of support, but the platitudes did not help much.

I have been watching my friends lose their postgraduation jobs and seeing layoff announcements at places where I thought I might work. The opportunities we worked so hard to pursue are evaporating in front of us. Some are considering leaving the country after graduation. Others may leave science entirely. For trainees from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds, these and other worries are an even bigger burden.

It is difficult to absorb all the uncertainty and still hold on to hope—to remember the feeling I had while watching the blue and yellow confetti flutter across my acceptance notification. But when I feel myself drifting toward despair, I think about what I learned during the pandemic, the first crisis of my Ph.D.: Build community and keep sharing the value of science. The way through this, as with all challenges, is with each other.

Read More