Erin Hill-Burns, PhD

Top of the photo has the "STAND UP FOR SCIENCE" logo. Below that in bold white text reads: "NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION". Below that in white text reads: "Take back our science, health, and democracy!". Below that in white text reads: "MARCH 7TH, 2026 WASHINGTON, DC AND NATIONWIDE!" Below that in black text reads: "NEW YORK - LOS ANGELES - BOSTON - CHICAGO - HOUSTON - BUFFALO - DURHAM - SAN FRANCISCO - DENVER - SEATTLE - RICHMOND - MADISON - PITTSBURG - FLAGSTAFF - SAN DIEGO - PHILADELPHIA - & MORE!". To the left of that is a graphic of the statue of liberty in red. Below that in the bottom left hand corner is the red "STAND UP FOR SCIENCE" logo. To the right of that is a link in white text reading: "standupforscience.net/march7"

Big news, dorks: We're going NATIONAL! Join us for our National Day of Action on March 7th in Washington DC, or at one of our satellite rallies across the US. We're taking back our science, health, and democracy!

Find or host your local rally! standupforscience.net/march7
(Link in bio!)

Biomedical and life science articles by female researchers spend longer under review from @plosbiology.org journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Article about scientists leaving (or not leaving) the US - including me!
I landed in a truly great spot - but what's happening in the US is messed up.
@isemevol.bsky.social @sfstatebio.bsky.social @umontpellier.bsky.social

This is huge news! Keep pushing-the American people and most in Congress still support strong funding for biomedical research

Opposite directions of association of higher physical activity and higher insulin resistance with human skeletal muscle cell type abundance and fiber type-level gene expression #snRNAseq #SingleNucleus #RNAseq #genomics 🧪🧬🖥️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Come be my colleague (& @jacquelyngill.bsky.social's and other great folks)!

UMaine is hiring a Genetics Facilities Manager to lead the CORE eDNA and DNA Sequencing Labs. Hiring range is $75-85k (up $20k from previous round)

fa-ewca-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Trump’s NIH And NSF Cuts Estimated To Cost The U.S. Economy $10 Billion Annually Economists find public R&D drives a quarter of U.S. productivity growth — and pays for itself

🧪 Basic science boosts the economy:

"The proposed dismantling of NSF [and NIH] raises an urgent question: do these cuts actually save money or merely delay spending until the bill gets larger?

The answer is clear: these cuts will cost the economy billions."

Fascinating post from @steveroyle.bsky.social on his "academic software stack". Really useful survey of software tools, databases, calendars, note taking apps, etc. a savvy lab is using. Essential reading for new PIs quantixed.org/2025/04/29/s...

As a diversity grant dies, young scientists fear it will haunt their careers The Trump administration defunded the National Institute of Health's MOSAIC grant program, which launched the careers of scientists from diverse backgrounds.

A group of scholars and I had a chance to share our experiences with the MOSAIC program being terminated 🧪

www.npr.org/sections/sho...

How we’re battling Trump’s science cuts across small-town America Neuroscientist Jessica Cantlon is urging scientists to use the power of local newspapers in the fight against US research-funding cuts.

What a great idea @sciencehomecoming.bsky.social "The idea behind Science Homecoming is that scientists across the United States get in touch with the local newspaper where they grew up and make the case for why funding science is important to those communities." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

How Trump 2.0 is slashing NIH-backed research — in charts Nature analyses which fields of science and US states are being hit hardest by grant terminations.

Deep dive into 800 cancelled NIH grants. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Corum is, of course, ON IT.

And on other news. My first contribution to science as a postdoc with @stirlingchurchman.bsky.social is out! We discuss the knowns and unknowns of post-transcriptional splicing. It was really fun to write with the great @karinechoquet

Thousands gather across U.S. in Stand Up for Science events Scientists rally across the country in response to layoffs and funding cuts ordered by the Trump administration

Breaking news: Thousands of researchers and their supporters, including recently fired federal workers, have gathered across the U.S. in response to layoffs and funding cuts ordered by the Trump administration. scim.ag/41zlPv4

Richard Lenski holding homemade sign that says "Save Science Save Lives" at rally outside the Michigan Capitol building.

At the #StandUpForScience rally outside the #Michigan Capitol building. Good turnout (especially with MSU on spring break) -- I'd estimate 800 to 1000 folks.

Great speakers from MSU, UM, and Wayne State and representing all career stages and many fields. Lots of clear and clever homemade signs.

WATCH LIVE: 'Stand up for Science' rally with Bill Nye and others at Lincoln Memorial in Washington YouTube video by PBS NewsHour

Getting reports of some sound problems with our Twitch livestream.

Here's another stream while we sort out some technical difficulties!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eemj...

Hundreds of weather forecasters fired in latest wave of DOGE cuts Federal workers who were not let go said the afternoon layoffs included meteorologists who do crucial local forecasts in National Weather Service offices across the U.S.

I’m thinking we should spread this news about the firings at NOAA as far and wide as possible. Like cancer research, weather forecasting seems likely to be broadly popular across the political spectrum. apnews.com/article/nati...

NIH ban on renewing senior scientists adds to assaults on its in-house research Policy follows firings of tenure-track scientists and suspension of training programs

Friends, I am at a loss of words for how devastating it would be to lose the entire intramural #NIH program. Some of the biggest medical and scientific breakthroughs have come from scientists in the NIH Intramural program. #SaveTheNIH 🧬🧪 🖥️ 🧠

www.science.org/content/arti...

Grad Admission Impacts Survey It is grad admissions season and many postbacs are feeling the chilling impacts of the Trump administration's recent executive orders freezing and slashing extramural research funding. Dozens of gradu...

As a result of Trump’s slashes to research funding, dozens of graduate programs have announced reductions and cancellations of graduate admissions slots.

If you are an impacted applicant, please fill out this survey: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

🧪🧠🧬🔬🥼👩🏼‍🔬🧑‍🔬

Women Refusing to Be Erased Join us to inspire, educate, and uplift women/womxn.

A website has been started in response to the orders to take down references to women’s accomplishments in government offices. We are not going to let them erase us this time. womenrefusingtobeerased.org

We all know the story of Henrietta Lacks, but there are countless other examples when biomedical research advanced with a little regard for morals or ethics - often at the expense of poor, disadvantaged, or minority individuals. This book has been enlightening. A good read for current scientists.

Breaking language barriers: ‘Not being fluent in English is often viewed as being an inferior scientist’ Biologist Tatsuya Amano works to make science a fairer place for non-fluent speakers.

Breaking language barriers: ‘Not being fluent in English is often viewed as being an inferior scientist’

Bioinformatics Methods for Transcriptomics -- looks like a great course https://www.coursera.org/learn/bioinformatics-methods-for-transcriptomics

To Read:

Disability in ecology and evolution In this TrendsTalk series ‘Disability in ecology and evolution’ in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, we will be hearing from people about their experiences being disabled or having a chronic condition an...

I guess I hadn't posted this yet and didn't even know it had come out-- I was interviewed for (and co-wrote w/Daniel Rabosky) a Trends in Ecology & Evolution "TrendsTalk" article on "Disability in ecology and evolution" -- www.cell.com/trends/ecolo... #DisabledInSTEM #academicchatter #academia

I’m excited to share that this manuscript is now published in Nature Genetics! 🧪🧬 🖥️

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The AdipoExpress data can be accessed here: zenodo.org/records/1384...

An interactive browser of the colocalization results can be accessed here: adipose.colocus.app

ASHG 2025 DNA Day Essay Contest

The #DNADay25 Essay Contest is HERE!

🧬High school students worldwide are invited to tackle this year’s thought-provoking question: How can and should Artificial Intelligence (AI) be used in genetic testing?

Submit your essay by March 5👉 www.ashg.org/dna-day/

#ASHG #HumanGenetics

ChromatinHD connects single-cell DNA accessibility and conformation to gene expression through scale-adaptive machine learning - Nature Communications Functional chromatin changes occur at different scales. Here, the authors introduce ChromatinHD, a method that characterises differential and predictive chromatin accessibility changes in a scale-adap...

Superb work by Wouter @Zouters & @OlgaPushkarev developing ChromatinHD, two scale-adaptive #machinelearning models & interpretation tools that use #scRNAseq + #scATACseq data to better understand how chromatin accessibility relates to gene expression doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Happy 2025 everyone 🎆 !

This looks amazing. What a wonderful tribute!

Every cell in our body is unique.

EMBL researchers have developed a statistical tool – LEMUR – to compare tissues and organisms using single-cell RNA sequencing and use it for applications in human health and fundamental biological research.

#AcademicSky 🧬🧪
www.nature.com/articles/s41...