From ScienceMag:

It took just 30 minutes for my carefully constructed future to crumble. First came the email, at 9:48 a.m. on 3 July. “Due to university budget constraints, we must rescind your job offer,” it read. The tenure-track position I had been weighing for weeks had vanished. Do not panic, I commanded myself. I had a backup option: to stay at my current institution, which despite a hiring freeze had stretched to also offer me a tenure-track position, though with only a small startup package. But a few minutes later, I was on a scheduled call with the program officer for my grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He gently explained that I couldn’t activate the award unless my institution committed much more funding of its own. I sat frozen until day care called: My 2-year-old had bumped his head and I needed to sign an accident report at pickup. That mundane errand became an anchor in a fast-moving river, reminding me there were still dinners to cook, bedtime stories to read, a family to nurture, a life to live.

Twenty months earlier, I had been full of naïve optimism as I started the 2023–24 job season. But 200 hours of applications yielded only two screening interviews and zero offers. Search committees were polite but blunt: “We’re looking for external funding.” So, I threw myself into grant writing. By midsummer 2024 I held a fundable score on an NIH K award, intended to help early-career investigators transition into independent roles. My calendar lit up: screening calls with several institutions, and two on-site visits. Success, I told myself, is a numbers game. File enough grants, book enough flights, and one door will stay open.

Then the political winds shifted. In February, a proposed cut to NIH indirect costs spooked university administrators nationwide. University C, which had planned to invite me for a second visit, froze hiring. University R went silent. Only University A pressed ahead. I delivered a Zoom seminar in March, a chalk talk in April, and received a job offer in May.

But ecstasy quickly gave way to anxiety when my husband, who works in biotech, couldn’t find a job in the same city. June blurred into spreadsheets and insomnia. Should we live apart so he could keep his current job? Perhaps, but who would the kids live with? I’d be launching a new lab; it couldn’t be me. Yet I’m their mother, and I want to kiss them good night every single day until they won’t let me. How about one parent with each child, on a rotating schedule? Too chaotic. Could my husband work in my lab? Aside from nepotism rules, I’d also like to stay married. I told University A I needed more time to decide.

If I stayed at my current institution, how much preliminary data could I generate on the limited startup budget? I feared a hopeless loop: no data, no new grants, no money to generate data. University A granted me a 1-week extension. But before I had a chance to decide, Congress passed the new spending bill, and I received that email saying the offer was canceled.

I allowed myself 1 day to mourn, rage‑scribbling in my notebook, eating ice cream for dinner, calling friends who had survived academic limbo. Their stories shared a common theme: Careers look linear only in hindsight. Offers vanish, grants get triaged, political tides turn. We keep going. But exactly how many detours can a junior scientist afford before running out of road?

That sleepless night, a flood in Texas claimed more than 130 lives, many of them children. Faced with real tragedy, my hardship shrank. A tenure‑track position is not life or death, and most setbacks are temporary (at least I hope!). Write one more grant even when the last review stings. Send one more email asking for an opening. Accept that “yes” can morph into “no” overnight, and sometimes back again.

I still don’t know whether my institution can piece together a patchwork startup big enough to activate the K grant; the department chair promises to “see what we can do.” I don’t know when I will unlock a lab door bearing my name. I can’t predict the next hiring cycle or the next election. But I can keep doing the science I love while I still have a bench. Between mouse surgeries and bedtime stories, I’ll write the next proposal. That, I’ve decided, is what resilience really means.

Read More

From ScienceMag:

The mantra “location, location, location” isn’t just about real estate. For life scientists, more than 50% of their productivity can be attributed to the institution where they work, according to a new study that tracked the publications of researchers as they moved during their career. The findings, published this month as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, play into an active and long-running debate over how to allocate limited research funding—and whether to implement policies that prevent grant dollars from being concentrated at a handful of big-name universities.

The study quantifies a phenomenon that’s probably familiar to many academics, says University of California, Berkeley economist Carolyn Stein, who wasn’t involved in the new study. It’s easy to imagine that “you can pick someone up and move them to a more productive place, and it will make them more productive.” Still, the magnitude of the observed effect is striking, she says. “The role of luck and path dependence in science is maybe larger than I’ve completely appreciated.”

The new study compiled data for about 300,000 U.S.-based life scientists who published between 1945 and 2023. Boston-area researchers had the highest productivity—publishing two or three times more papers per year in 15 journals that cover basic life science research, including Cell, Nature, and Science, compared with researchers in many other metropolitan areas. When a researcher moved from a less productive institution to one with higher average productivity, they became more productive as well, according to a “wandering scholar” analysis that included about 38,000 scientists who had a publication record from before and after moving between institutions.

The team wasn’t able to pinpoint what institutional characteristics led to productivity gains. Lead author Amitabh Chandra, an economist at Harvard University, notes that “it could be something about resources, facilities, graduate students.”

A previous study backs that up: Faculty at top U.S. universities who work in fields where collaboration and co-authorship are the norm were more productive in large part because they led larger lab groups, researchers reported in a 2022 paper published in Science Advances. “It’s this labor that increases faculty productivity, not really inherent characteristics of the faculty themselves,” says Aaron Clauset, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder and senior author on the 2022 study.

Chandra and Harvard colleague Connie Xu began the new study well before President Donald Trump’s administration took over and halted the flow of research funding to Harvard. But the findings indicate how much research could be lost if funding isn’t reinstated. “Entire countries produce less than what Harvard produces,” notes Chandra, whose analysis found that his institution publishes 3.6% of the global output of top life science papers—the most of any single institution in the world. “When we turn off the funding to one of these large producers … the implications are colossal.”

Recent political developments aside, the paper also plays into a decadeslong policy discussion about how to allocate federal grant money. Should funders aim to maximize output—resulting in a concentration of grants at relatively few elite institutions—or would it better serve the public to spread funding around more broadly? The new study makes plain the benefits of favoring the elites: “If … funders are choosing between two equally productive scientists, one at an institution whose average research output is twice the other’s,” Chandra and Xu write, “funders could get more than 50% more research by prioritizing a scientist at the more productive institution.”

But Chandra acknowledges it’s also “perfectly valid” to base funding decisions on priorities other than research output, such as reducing funding disparities. He hopes the data in the new study can provide solid numbers to inform the debate. “The point in our paper is not that you should not spread the money around, but you should know why you’re spreading the money around.”

Others say the argument against further enriching highly productive intuitions is already clear. “Those institutions are in a position to make faculty that much more productive … because they’ve received large amounts of research support over many, many decades,” says University of Vermont Vice President for Research and Economic Development Kirk Dombrowski, who also serves as board chair for the EPSCoR/IDeA Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes science in underfunded states. Allocating resources to them disproportionately would “reflect more of the historical inequities that have created differences,” he says.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made some steps to try to address concerns that researchers at elite universities benefit from reputational bias in the review process. In January, the agency changed its grant review procedures to try to de-emphasize the importance of a researcher’s expertise and institutional resources. Reviewers can note potential concerns in those areas, but they’re no longer given a numerical rating. “You should judge [a proposal] on the quality of the grant that’s in front of you,” says Sharlene Day, a cardiologist and physician scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and former chair of an NIH study section.

NIH and the National Science Foundation (NSF) also have long-running programs, called IDeA and EPSCoR, respectively, that reserve a portion of their budget for projects in states that receive the least funding through traditional funding tracks. As the prospect of major funding cuts looms, some worry about the future of such programs. But in comments last month at a Senate hearing about the upcoming fiscal year’s budget, NIH Director Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya voiced his support. “It’s absolutely vital that NIH investments are geographically dispersed,” Bhattacharya told West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R), whose state receives less than 1% of NIH grant dollars annually. “In my mind, it’s probably … less funded than it ought to be.”

Typically, about 94% of NIH’s budget goes to researchers in just 27 states, points out Prakash Nagarkatti, an immunologist at the University of South Carolina and former university administrator. But there’s evidence that when grants go to researchers in other, less well funded states, “they are really productive, and they publish quality papers.” His own research, published in PLOS ONE in 2023, shows that in underfunded states, the research community publishes more research articles and garners more citations per million dollars in federal grant funding than those in states with greater federal support.

But spreading out the funding makes sense regardless of recipients’ output, Nagarkatti adds. Additional funding for hiring and training a Ph.D. student, for example, could boost the pipeline of locally produced researchers and result in work that solves regional problems. “Overall, every state gets benefit[s], rather than few states.”

Read More

From ScienceMag:

The first time I saw my byline on a news story published by my scientific society, I jumped up and down. I had never felt so much pride and ownership about something I did, and for a moment I was free of the habitual self-doubt that had plagued me as a Ph.D. student. But a few months later, when I told my lab group I was writing for the society, there was an uncomfortable silence. To fill the pause, I blabbered about how little the role meant to me. “It’s really not a big deal,” I told my labmates. Later, my reaction bothered me. Why did I act embarrassed about something that had finally given me the passionate spark I had been looking for in science?

My decision 4 years earlier to pursue a Ph.D. was a lot more practical and exploratory than I let on. The work permit the U.S. government had granted me after I finished my bachelor’s degree was coming to an end, and I had two options: stay at the biotech startup where I’d worked for a few years, which had offered to sponsor a new visa application if I signed a 5 year contract, or go back to school. At 22, I hadn’t yet figured out what I wanted to do with my life, so I opted for school.

I started feeling like a fish out of water early on. Everyone around me seemed to be driven by their burning love of science. I felt out of place, uninspired, and incompetent. “It’s just imposter syndrome,” everyone told me. For years, I believed them, thinking that with more experience and confidence, things would change.

But as time went on, the feelings only got stronger. In my fourth year, I started reading blog posts and watching videos in all flavors of “How to know if you should quit your Ph.D.” One YouTuber asked, “Does the idea of someone taking your Ph.D. away make you angry or relieved?”

I thought about the question. The idea didn’t make me angry, despite how much work I’d already put into my dissertation research. “Relieved” was more like it. But at the same time, I knew that I had too much fight in me to leave my program. “That’s fine, I’ll get my degree,” I told myself, “then quit science and pursue something else entirely.”

Partly in search of this “something else,” I began writing. At first, I mainly used it as a creative outlet. But eventually, it led me to explore science communication. I connected with an editor at my scientific society’s magazine, who gave me an opportunity to write articles about newly published scientific papers.

Suddenly, the world of science became much more appealing. In reading and writing about research that had nothing to do with my own, I felt curious, enlightened, and empowered—all the things I didn’t feel as a scientist. The work fed the side of me that, as my mom would say, was always interested in “way too many things.” I began to entertain the idea that my problem wasn’t imposter syndrome—maybe I truly was a fish out of water, and all I needed to do was leave my life on land.

I decided to tell my academic mentors about my new passion. I’d hoped that my discovery would elate them as much as it did me, and that they would bless my desire to explore new waters. Instead, like my labmates, they could not understand why I would want to pursue anything other than research. They blamed imposter syndrome and offered their support. “You can do this,” they told me.

Truthfully, I did worry about what my life would look like if I left the world of scientific research. My family might be disappointed and I might face visa obstacles. I shared those concerns with a writing mentor, who at one point had also been an international student. “Follow your heart, and the rest will follow,” she told me.

I knew in my heart that I wanted to pursue science communication after I graduated. And once I chose to trust that feeling, I found that I no longer struggled to breathe. I still felt out of place in academia. But I now knew where I belonged and how to get there. That gave me the confidence to not only complete my Ph.D., but also tell my colleagues that I was moving into science communication without feeling awkward or embarrassed.

So, if you’re feeling like a fish out of water, remember that there are little ponds and streams all around you. All you have to do is trust that feeling and—sometimes—jump.

Read More

From ScienceMag:

It was a conversation neither wanted to have. Last month, University of Maryland professor Anne Simon broke the difficult news to Xiaobao Ying that she didn’t have funding to extend his assistant research scientist position beyond July as they had originally planned. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had agreed last year to fund a field trial for their team’s work on citrus greening, an economically important crop disease, which would have covered his salary for 2 years. But after President Donald Trump’s administration took over, the funds were frozen. “It’s very hard because you’re devastating people’s lives,” Simon says of the conversation with Ying. “I’ve never had to do this in 38 years.”

Ying, a single father who has worked in Simon’s lab for 5 years, is now scrambling to find another research job. He’s only seen one position that he felt qualified to apply for. “I don’t think it will be easy,” he says. “Everywhere funding is short.” In the meantime, he plans to try to get by as an Uber driver.

Similar conversations are taking place across the country as the federal government has paused or terminated billions of dollars of grants, proposed slashing research funding by more than 40% for key research agencies in the next fiscal year, and tried—so far without success—to cut overhead payments to universities. In response, graduate schools have reduced the size of their incoming cohorts and faculty have been anxiously watching their budgets and worrying about their own careers. “My lab is definitely going to shrink,” says Arthi Jayaraman, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Delaware, Newark.

So is U.S. academic science as a whole—perhaps dramatically. Numbers released in May by the National Science Foundation (NSF) indicate that if Congress approves the cuts to the agency proposed by the White House, the number of early-career researchers it supports could fall by 78%—from 95,700 undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs during this fiscal year, to 21,400 in 2026. Young researchers supported by other agencies would also be hit, and even senior faculty worry about their future. “It’s a nightmare,” Simon says. “I really fear for the future of science.” (NSF declined to comment for the story.)

Multiple industry representatives tell Science they are seeing notable increases in the number of scientists applying for jobs, with Regeneron saying applications from people with doctorate degrees are up 20%. But it’s not clear that industry will be able to absorb all the Ph.D.s currently on the job market, especially given the flood of former federal scientists also looking for work.

For young researchers, “there is a lot of pressure to essentially leave the country or not pursue research,” says Emilya Ventriglia, a neuroscience Ph.D. student at Brown University who once thought she’d do a postdoc—but now isn’t so sure. “I’m looking at these people who … are extremely accomplished, some of the top in their field,” she says of the postdocs she knows, “and the door is closing on them.”

A prominent chemistry blogger who has tracked the faculty job market for 9 years wrote on his blog in April that he expects faculty job openings to be down by at least 20% over the coming year. “Universities are under tremendous governmental and financial pressure,” he wrote. Others note that if researchers begin to scale down their labs and take on larger teaching roles, teaching positions could decline as well.

Current junior faculty are also feeling nervous, fearing they will lack the money and the staff to get their research program off the ground and fulfill tenure requirements. Biophysicist Krishna Mudumbi, who began his position as an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University in January, has been carefully weighing how to spend his limited startup package, uncertain whether new sources of funding will materialize anytime soon. The anxiety, he says, “really reduces my ability to do high-risk, high-reward type of experiments” because by the end of a project, he wants to be sure he’ll have research findings to show for it.

Many academics Science spoke with said they hope universities will adjust tenure expectations, as they did during the COVID-19 pandemic. Otherwise, some fear assistant professors will lose their jobs in the coming years simply because they did not have the funding to amass a strong research record. “It’s a very, very scary climate for a lot of junior faculty members,” says Barbara Landau, a cognitive science professor at Johns Hopkins University who is particularly worried that universities will see a reversal in recent gains in gender and racial diversity.

At Duke University, even some tenured professors are worried about their job security. In May, basic science researchers in Duke’s School of Medicine were told that if they don’t pull in enough external funding over a 3-year period, their salary could be adjusted downward. “It’s a creative way to go around the tenure system and force tenured professors to quit on their own,” says a Duke professor who spoke with Science on the condition of anonymity.

In an email to Science, Duke officials wrote, “We are looking at every aspect of our finances with the goal of preserving as many jobs as we can.” Faculty salaries is one aspect under consideration, they added, but no final decisions have been made.

If the policy does take effect, its staying power may depend on the outcome of an ongoing lawsuit filed by professors at the Tufts University School of Medicine against a similar policy enacted at their institution in 2017. That lawsuit is scheduled to be heard in court later this year.

Many are looking ahead, wondering what all this portends for the future of U.S. academic science. “The sands are shifting,” says Donna Ginther, an economist at the University of Kansas who has spent decades studying the scientific workforce. “Academic science has become a much more risky career proposition in this environment.”

The situation could make it challenging for professors to recruit lab members—especially those coming from abroad. Temporary visa holders currently account for 41% of Ph.D. students and 58% of postdocs at U.S. universities, according to a 2023 survey of the science, engineering, and health fields. But that influx of talent could run dry if foreign candidates are alarmed by funding cuts and visa cancellations and decide to go elsewhere. Jayaraman, who was once an international student in the United States herself, says that under the current circumstances, “I probably wouldn’t come here. … I would invest my time in a place where there’s stability.”

Meanwhile, some U.S. students and researchers are weighing whether they’d be better off elsewhere. One university in Canada launched a program to attract 20 doctoral students whose acceptance into a U.S. graduate program had been rescinded or who were reconsidering attending. And in Europe, the newly created Choose Europe For Science program is poised to invest €500 million between now and 2027 to attract researchers at a variety of career stages.  

Ying, a green card holder originally from China, says he wants to find a research job in the U.S. But he’s not sure that will be possible anytime soon. “The situation is very stressful,” he says. “I have trouble sleeping.”

Read More