Hard to believe it’s already been 1 year since opening the Kowalski Lab! Such a whirlwind. Feeling so fortunate to work with these amazing women and for the support of the NIAID DP2 New Innovators Award that will fund our work on the skin mycobiome and atopic dermatitis for the next five years! 🔬

For those in the mood for some seriously well-done gallows humor, I heartily recommend this... inpreparation.substack.com/p/nih-simpli...

NIH Simplifies Grant Scoring To 👍 🤷‍♂️ 😂

BETHESDA, MD—The National Institutes of Health announced Tuesday that it would replace its 50-year-old numerical scoring system with a streamlined three-emoji format, in which grant applications will ...

inpreparation.substack.com

Circulating and brain-resident memory CD8+ T cells seed distinct bystander TRM-like populations in glioblastoma https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.19.733403v1

Mucosal-associated invariant T cells support IL-15-dependent Treg response in skin injury and promote resolution of skin inflammation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.28.735088v1

We are hiring!! The Dept of Micro and Immuno at Dartmouth has an open position for an Assistant Prof. Link here to apply. Feel free to directly reach out to me with any questions! apply.interfolio.com/187637

A decade ago we showed that T-dependent IgM+ memory B cells (MBCs) that express CD80 and CD73 rapidly respond to a secondary Plasmodium infection (Krishnamurty, Immunity, 2016). Since then, post-doc Gretchen Harms Pritchard has been working out the cues that lead to the formation of these cells. ⤵️

Journal of Experimental Medicine@jem.org · 3mo ago

Harms Pritchard, @marionpepper.bsky.social et al. dissect key CD4⁺ T cell/B cell interactions to define signals that govern the development of memory B cell populations. rupress.org/jem/article/... #InfectiousDisease #HostDefense #LymphocyteBiology #BCells

📽️ New video summary of a study "BCL6 is required for the development of functionally responsive IgM+ GC Tfh–independent memory B cells" from the @marionpepper.bsky.social lab (rupress.org/jem/article/...) Video by the first author, Gretchen Harms Pritchard:

BCL6 is required for development of functionally responsive IgM+ GC Tfh independent Memory B Cells

Original paper: https://rupress.org/jem/article/223/8/e20252336/282726/BCL6-is-required-for-the-development-of Video summary by Gretchen Harms Pritchard (Marion Pepper lab, University of Washington)…

youtu.be

If you have not left a public comment on the draconian OMB-2026-0034, here's a quick thread to make it easy. #standupforscience #neuroskyence Click here: www.regulations.gov/document/OMB...

My summary of OMB's proposed Federal Financial Assistance rule was based on 22 years as an NIH Program Official and the damage I saw to science funding would be. I want to widen the lens now: scientists are not the only ones who should be alarmed. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/this-new-o...

This new OMB Rule Is Bigger Than Science. Much Bigger.

This image was generated by Google AI (Gemini)

elizabethginexi.substack.com

On OMB's proposal to make all grants political: "Speak up! Now’s the time! Standing by the side of the room, glancing around nervously and hoping that somebody else does something will lead us to disaster. These are not normal times, so stop acting as if they are." www.science.org/content/blog...

Action! Action Now.

science.org

Review @pcrosato1.bsky.social Living rent free in your head: resident memory T cells academic.oup.com/immunohorizo...

ASPIRE to new horizons @immunohorizons.bsky.social academic.oup.com/immunohorizo...

ASPIRE to new horizons

As a scientist in training, I often wondered what it truly meant to be recognized as an immunologist. Beyond publishing rigorous and insightful research, h

academic.oup.com

"The other way to put this is that NIH funded 33.1% fewer Hispanic trainees and only 6.3% fewer Non-Hispanic trainees in FY2025...we probably don’t have to think about this too deeply. The anti 'DEI' agenda of the new regime...is probably sufficient"

Drug Monkey@drugmonkey.bsky.social · 5mo ago

NIH Fellowship awards for FY2025 by ethnicity drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/03/23/n...

This is such a unique way to build awareness, I love it. The advertising has been starting a lot of conversations locally. www.mynbc5.com/article/ice-...

ICE Tours VT hosts guided tour to multiple DHS facilities across Chittenden County

Over a dozen 'concerned' citizens hold inaugural ICE Tour Tuesday morning with friends and family, over 100 have signed up for round two

mynbc5.com

Very happy for my former PhD student Jarrod Smith, seen here in his new lab. He is now an Asst Professor of Medicine & Microbiology/Immunology at Dartmouth! It is great to have him back. His lab uses zebrafish as a model to study gut microbiota. graduate.dartmouth.edu/mcb/people/j...

Josh Fessel wrote a damn good explainer: substack.com/inbox/post/1...

NIH Unified Funding Framework

"WTF happened to paylines???!!!" and other questions

substack.com

This afternoon, I was in a meeting with Jay Bhattacharya, and I can confirm this is *exactly* what he both wants and will be doing. THIS IS NOT HYPERBOLE.

Kristian G. Andersen@kgandersen.bsky.social · 9mo ago

I missed this from a couple of weeks ago, but if you're an NIH-funded investigator, please read. Peer review will exist to make things look legitimate, but can, and will, be over-ruled. Funding decisions, ultimately, will be done by political appointees. grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

In my last story on staff at the Times, my colleagues and I analyzed over a decade of federal science funding and interviewed many federal employees to identify all of the science that went unfunded this year. Here's a paywall-free link:

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine (Gift Article)

A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

nytimes.com

we are hiring! reach out to me for more info if you are interested! apply.interfolio.com/174605

Pre-print alert! And this one really is a must read for anyone that does spectral #flowcytometry. It is a complete, fully-automated spectral unmixing pipeline that reduces error up to 9000-fold. Want to get a tough sample, like lung, looking like this? Read more! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

www.latimes.com/obituaries/s... RIP David Baltimore. A true giant of biomedical research. Made so many fundamental discoveries: Reverse transcriptase; NF-kB; Rag genes (among others) Also shut down his lab for a week in 1970 to protest the US invasion of Cambodia.

David Baltimore, Nobel Prize-winning scientist and former Caltech president, dies at 87

Baltimore played a role in virtually every important national debate over the use and potential misuse of the science of genetic engineering.

latimes.com

I applaud workers at the CDC for standing up against Sec. Kennedy’s dangerous anti-vaccine crusade. We are witnessing a full-blown war on public health from the Trump Administration. History will not look kindly on those who stayed silent in the face of this assault on science.

Many of us have long been worried about the harm of the 50% multiyear funding (MYF) requirement. When NCI published their payline at 4% AND cited MYF as the cause, I thought: “Someone in NCI is a hero. They took a huge risk to make the community aware.” www.cancer.gov/grants-train...

Columbia University’s agreement with the Trump administration is a disaster for academic freedom, freedom of speech, & the independence of American higher education. Never in the history of our nation has an educational institution so thoroughly bent to the will of an autocrat. 1/

This critical new knowledge of how a major clinical therapy (2018 Nobel prize) works was made possible by multiple research, training & career development awards from NCI & NIAID & NCATS, which face ~40% cuts of >$8 billion jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

“If you cut out these diversity measures, you're going to make science full of people that are very elite…Full of people who have grown up with a large amount of privilege, who were able to work in a lab in high school because their dad was a prof at Cornell.” 🧪 www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/u...

How Trump’s D.E.I. Cuts Are Hurting Rural White Americans Too

nytimes.com

THIS IS IT! THIS IS HUGE!! PLAINTIFF'S WIN!! Judge Young rules that the NIH grant terminations at issue in these cases are illegal and therefore vacated. BOOM!

Scott Delaney@scott-delaney.bsky.social · last yr.

"This Court rules that the challenged directives . . . are arbitrary and capricious." "They are of no force and effect." "They are illegal and so are each of the terminations before this Court"

🚨 BREAKING: Nearly 4 months the NIH cut its first grants, a judge has ruled that the directives and process that led to cuts are arbitrary and capricious. "The explanations are bereft of reasoning — virtually in their entirety... unsupported by [facts]." Each of them are VOID and ILLEGAL, he says.

Gift link to Atlantic article www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

An Uproar at the NIH

Jay Bhattacharya, the the agency’s director, has made a point of welcoming dissent. A letter from his officials will test that.

theatlantic.com

Add your name in support alongside 20+ Nobel loreates and >8000 other scientists!

Stand Up for Science!@standupforscience.net · last yr.

(5/5) 🚨 It’s time to flood the zone. NIH scientists just took a huge risk speaking out. Now it’s our turn. 📜 Read the Bethesda Declaration ✍️ Sign the Public Letter of Support 👯‍♀️Follow NIHers doing the work: @nihvigils.bsky.social Read and sign here 👉 www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec...