National institute of aging decimated
https://www.splinter.com/bloodbath-at-nih-and-elsewhere-at-hhs-begins
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Do we know if the ITP was spared? It’s our beacon of light in these dark ages for longevity research.
She Worked in a Harvard Lab to Reverse Aging, Until ICE Jailed Her
President Trump’s immigration crackdown ensnared Kseniia Petrova, a scientist who fled Russia after protesting its invasion of Ukraine. She fears arrest if she is deported there.
A graduate of a renowned Russian physics and technology institute, Ms. Petrova was recruited to work at a laboratory at Harvard Medical School. She was part of a team investigating how cells can rejuvenate themselves, with the goal of fending off the damage of aging.
On Feb. 16, customs officials detained her at Logan International Airport in Boston for failing to declare samples of frog embryos she had carried from France at the request of her boss at Harvard.
Such an infraction is normally considered minor, punishable with a fine of up to $500. Instead, the customs official canceled Ms. Petrova’s visa on the spot and began deportation proceedings. Then Ms. Petrova told her that she had fled Russia for political reasons and faced arrest if she returned there.
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The Kirschner Lab, where Dr. Peshkin works, is investigating the earliest stages of cell division. These changes are easy to observe in the eggs of the xenopus frog, which are large and hardy. To lure Marc W. Kirschner to Harvard, the university constructed a vast aquarium where females bob in circulating water, known internally as the “frog palace.”
Dr. Peshkin’s team is interested in sperm and egg cells, and how they repair damage as an embryo develops. They needed someone equally fluent in machine learning and cell biology, Dr. Peshkin explained in a post on Kaggle, an online community for data scientists. Ms. Petrova reached out.
When she arrived in Boston in May 2023, Dr. Peshkin was shocked to discover that she had not brought a suitcase; she carried a backpack. It became clear, he said, that she was “extremely ascetic,” entirely wrapped up in her research.
Many in the research community there only learned about it two weeks ago, when Ms. Petrova’s co-workers started a GoFundMe appeal to help pay her legal expenses. The news sent shudders through a sprawling community of scientists who immigrated to the United States for careers in research. It comes amid deep cuts in federal funding for science that, to many, signal that a period of openness and progress may be ending.
Read the full story: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/science/russian-scientist-ice-detained-harvard.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-04.rsOe.fUKopU027aZ9&smid=url-share
Related:
GoFund Me for the Scientist:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/stand-with-kseniia-a-harvard-scientist-in-need
More on this group led by Leon Peshkin:
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White House to propose massive NIH budget cut
The Washington Post is reporting that Trump’s near-final 2026 budget proposal will seek a roughly 40% cut to the current $47.4 billion budget of the National Institutes of Health. The proposal would also merge NIH’s 27 institutes and centers into eight and eliminate the nursing and minority health institutes, according to the newspaper. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be slashed 44% to $5.2 billion as part of an overall $40 billion, or one-third, cut to the budget of the Department of Health and Human Services.) Congress, which will have the final say, rejected requests Trump made during his first term to slash NIH’s budget.
DOE overhead costs cap blocked
In response to a lawsuit brought by a coalition of universities and higher education organizations, a federal judge in Massachusetts today temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Energy from implementing its plan to cut in half the overhead rate it allows on grants to universities. The decision by District Court Judge Allison Burroughs marks the second time the courts have blocked a Trump administration effort to slash the “indirect cost” rate allowed by a major research agency; on 4 April a different federal judge prevented NIH from moving ahead with a similar plan.
On 11 April, DOE abruptly announced it would cap its indirect cost rate at 15%—meaning it would pay universities no more than an additional 15 cents for every dollar of direct research it funds. The current average is about 30%, DOE said, adding that the change would save DOE $405 million in an annual external research grants budget of $2.5 billion. (That total doesn’t include DOE’s support for its 17 national laboratories.)
University groups decried the move, arguing in a lawsuit filed on 14 April that DOE had violated a federal law that required the department to explain its justification for the cut and seek public comment. They also noted that the courts had already blocked a nearly identical effort by NIH to cut its indirect cost rate to 15%. In issuing today’s temporary restraining order, Burroughs wrote that the plaintiffs had made a compelling case that DOE’s policy would cause them “immediate and irreparable injury,” and ordered each side to prepare for a 28 April hearing on the matter.
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60 minutes talks about the effects of NIH cuts.