Carolyn Phillips

The Department of Neurobiology at USC has launched a new PhD program and is recruiting our first cohort. Explore our labs: dornsife.usc.edu/neurobiology... Applications due December 1, 2026. GRE optional. Fee waivers available for demonstrated need. Apply here: dornsife.usc.edu/neurobiology...

This plan will make peer review less transparent and more confusing to applicants and program staff. Y'all killed it on the OMB proposal, you know what to do here. Comment deadline is October 13.

We are proud to announce the newest cohort of Damon Runyon Fellows! These 14 exceptional postdocs will receive four years of independent funding to advance their investigation of causes, treatments, and prevention strategies for all types of cancer. Read more: https://bit.ly/4cj7Gby

Huge congratulations to all the new Damon Runyon Fellows, including former Phillips lab PhD student @shihuichen.bsky.social! www.damonrunyon.org/discovery/da...

“Trump has rejected disaster aid for Democratic-run states at the highest rate in the 47-year history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” Right now people in blue states are basically paying federal taxes as if they’re colonized territories of red states. www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

Absolutely sobbing by the end of this story. A must-read. Very interested to see what impact this has on the gene-editing field. www.science.org/content/arti...

Of all the harm this administration has done to US science, today's proposed changes to the way federal grants are awarded and administered is the most damaging yet. The text of the federal register document is impenetrably tedious by design, so here's an excellent summary of what it says.

Earlier this week I posted an example of a fake western blot provided by ThermoFisher to demonstrate the validity of a p53 antibody. I considered it an amusing curiosity. In fact Thermo Fisher Scientific has systematically manipulated antibody validation data!

More on the destruction of US science. www.chronicle.com/article/they...

I am hiring a popgen postdoc! Looking for a creative scientist to join us at USC to investigate recessive variation and complex traits in model or non-model species. The project is funded by a multi-year NIH grant, contract can be renewed. Job add & details 👇🏽 usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...

Check out our newly published work in #GENETICS!

New in #GENETICS: A systematic disruption of small RNA-binding capacity of multiple Argonaute proteins identifies a critical role of small RNA loading in maintaining the stability and localization of Argonaute proteins during #Celegans germline development. buff.ly/Aguq9c5

New and competitive renewal awards Fewer than 40 new awards were made in the past week, compared to over 100 the previous week. 5/9

Been hearing some horrifying chatter about dealing with the new #NIH common form and #ScienCV system, so I put together a short video with some tricks for mitigating some of those pain points. Hope it helps? 🧪 open.substack.com/pub/emptymod...

Another YouTube Tutorial – This one on Proximity Labeling and connected to our recent EMBO J. paper (PMID: 41381733). This is a recording of a talk at the IDeA National Resource for Quantitative Proteomics in Little Rock AR. One of the top facilities in the country! www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T9P...

Greetings! I decided to make a YouTube video of my AlphaFold workshop that I've given a few times in the past year. Caveats aside, people seem to find this useful for thinking about how to model protein interactions and how to interpret various AF outputs 1/2 www.youtube.com/watch?v=u63o...

New review out! 🧬🪱 How do Argonautes bind the right small RNAs? We synthesize how small RNA features, Argonaute properties, chaperones, and subcellular organization shape small RNA binding specificity. rnajournal.cshlp.org/content/earl...

Y'all, I just got out of the NSF-BIO webinar where they explained changes to peer review. It's not good. 🧪 scienceforeveryone.science/changes-to-n...

Today @anthropic.com released PubMed integration for Claude. No hallucinations. Just real science, real data. As a beta tester, this has been game changing— a supercharged research tool. Here are 6 prompts that will transform how you search the literature. A 🧵 www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...

Dear all, A scientist from UNC Chapel Hill, Paul Maddox, is running for congress in NC for a seat currently held by a republican. If you care about science (and democracy) please consider donating to his campaign #Standupforscience secure.actblue.com/donate/paul-...

Today was a hard day for Ph.D. students who found out that they can no longer apply for NSF's prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Program. "Devastating“ was how one student described it to me. #GradSchool #NSFGRFP www.science.org/content/arti...

Sign the petition to call for the removal of RFK, Jr. www.standupforscience.net/rfk-impeachm...

The US could see a 30-40% decline in new international student enrollment, resulting in nearly $7 billion in lost revenue and more than 60,000 fewer American jobs. https://www.nafsa.org/fall-2025-international-student-enrollment-outlook-and-economic-impact

Suspension of all grants to UCLA www.latimes.com/california/s...

A little known - but hugely consequential - part of the government’s changes to science funding: open.substack.com/pub/sciencea...

Huge thanks to Cathy Savage-Dunn @cswormlab.bsky.social and Baris Tursun @baristursun.bsky.social for an amazing #worm25 !! I want to call out the OUTSTANDING meeting they created! Talks and posters were A+++. Most of all they brought us together in one of the most challenging times we've had.

CNN story updated with specifics: "the administration is specifically considering a full termination of federal grant funding for the University of California and California State University systems. A White House official said Friday afternoon that no final decision had been made on the cuts."

Dear lord: "On Capitol Hill, at least one committee was told recently by a whistleblower that all research grants to the state were going to be cancelled." The U of Cali system alone accounts for $4B+ per year in federal R&D. If true, let's hope for another all-or-nothing fight like Harvard's.

Now there's a memorable stat! "Colleges and universities are among America’s most competitive international exporters. In dollar terms, last year, the United States sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it sold in natural gas and coal combined." wapo.st/3EvzMCI

in these bleak times for US science and society, it was so wonderful to connect and celebrate with Ruvkun lab members from the decades. i can't believe postdocs and students i met 33 yrs ago in college still remember me. thanks Gary for giving me a chance and showing me everything cool in science!

Trump and Musk are demanding NIH cut 35% of contracts. That will devastate NIH science and grant funding — many of the contracts support people doing extramural work, or extramural/grant databases. Moreover, the number is bullshit. They just made it up. There is no need—and in fact, it's illegal.

STILL no New or Competing Renewal awards from NIGMS. Only NIGMS seems to not be making these awards.

FG repeats drive co-clustering of nuclear pores and P granules in the C. elegans germline Read this #OpenAccess Research Article by Laura Thomas, Devavrat Bodas and Geraldine Seydoux: doi.org/10.1242/dev....

It's going to be a brutal day at the NIH. Never forget what the Republicans have done to science. I never want to hear that there is "bipartisan support for research" ever again. Congress could step in at any moment.

It's our turn apparently. #thetop60 #winning nypost.com/2025/04/01/u...

This is what breaks my heart. These young people who are so eager and full of promise and who are the next generation of Nobel Prize winners, scientists inventors, teachers. #Trump and #Musk have destroyed it all. www.wired.com/story/the-ch...

$25 C. elegans genomes!!! Let's do some forward genetic screens!

This is a shocking lack of courage from Stanford. Stanford is allowing Bhattacharya to go emeritus instead of calling him out—for all he got wrong on COVID and for all the rank garbage he wrote in rightwing sites from Epoch Times to NYPost Opinion. Stanford will own the damage to NIH that he does.

One of my Bsky posts and a bit of my ranting in this article. Yet another bone-headed move aimed at destroying the American scientific enterprise. www.chemistryworld.com/news/bill-to...

mRNA vaccines are legit a near-miracle tech, there's one in testing that might be able to cure pancreatic cancer, and this fucking degenerate might take them from us arstechnica.com/health/2025/...