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Liz Chrastil

@chrastil.bsky.social
1.1K followers 810 following 85 posts

spatial neuroscience researcher, associate professor at UC Irvine, creator of virtual environments, lover of mazes faculty.sites.uci.edu/spatialneuro/

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Reposted by Liz Chrastil
Erin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴 @wamsleylab.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The fiscal year is over. The dying Social, Behavioral, and Economic division of NSF ended up awarding 90 total grants this year, as opposed to ~700-800 in recent past years. Source: grantwitness.org/nsf/analyses...
The graph shows the cumulative number of awards made by month across this fiscal year, as compared to the last 6 fiscal years. The line for this year is total flat until June, but then finally gets up to 91 by October. In prior years the increase starts building earlier and ends on average in the 700-800 range (with variability, last year was only between 400-500).
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Dr Anna Leshinskaya @annaleshinskaya.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I am recruiting graduate students for UCI's PhD in Cognitive Sciences - www.cogsci.uci.edu/graduate/pro... The lab's focus is on how relational structure and combinatorial reasoning is implemented in human brains and large language models--and if they are similar.
cogsci.uci.edu
GRADUATE PROGRAM
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Reposted by Liz Chrastil
Alicia Izquierdo @aliciaizquierdo.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
📣 Assistant Professor of Teaching in Neuroscience at UCLA! ☀️ 🧠 Apply before Nov 9th recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF11315
recruit.apo.ucla.edu
Assistant Professor of Teaching in Neuroscience in the UCLA Department of Psychology and Undergraduate Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program
University of California, Los Angeles is hiring. Apply now!
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Liz Chrastil @chrastil.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Nice! Ok I’m glad that he didn’t just completely zone out on that one
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Liz Chrastil @chrastil.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Love this, although the only highlight my child from today gave was the fire drill. I’ll have to ask!
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 20/09/2026
“The arrangement would give Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, a direct role in determining how NIH distributes its $48 billion in congressionally-appropriated money.” Bypassing the many checks and balances at NIH on grant funding decisions.
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aaron bornstein @aaronbornstein.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
UC Irvine Cognitive Sciences is hiring! Focus on social cognition, broadly construed. Come be my colleague :) I am not on the search committee but happy to talk about the campus, environment, careers, etc any time. recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF10411
recruit.ap.uci.edu
Assistant Professor - Cognitive Sciences
University of California, Irvine is hiring. Apply now!
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 28/08/2026
Constructive action: It is our job as scientists now not merely to talk about what’s happening but more. The public is looking for us to signal that things are very bad—to act like it!—and also to tell them WHY it is happening. If we don’t tell the public why science is being torn down, who will?
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Reposted by Liz Chrastil
Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Finally, this has gone a bit under the radar, so I want to highlight it: The social, behavioral and economic sciences directorate (SBE) has simply ceased to deliver grants to many of its subareas. Any topic not specifically OK'd by the Trump administration is receiving zero new awards.
All of the NSF’s directorates are awarding fewer new grants, but the hardest hit is the social, behavioural and economic sciences (SBE) directorate, which the White House proposed eliminating in its 2027 budget request to Congress. SBE has so far awarded 84 new grants this year, about 11% of its average, mainly in areas of artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience and decision-making. Much of its portfolio, such as sociology, archaeology, political science, economics and geography, has received zero new awards. “I don’t think they’ve realized yet that there’s no awards,” one NSF staff member says of researchers in those fields. “That’s going to be clear soon.”
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Scoop: For nearly a year, NSF has struggled to make new grants. Now we know that it will not catch up. In fact, NSF will award just 6,100 new grants—a 30% y/o/y decline, itself down from a previous avg. of 11,000+. In fact, the last time NSF awarded so few grants was in the early '80s.
nature.com
Exclusive: NSF set to issue lowest number of new grants in four decades
The US science-funding agency is withholding $1 billion of its budget so that the money can go to a special White House project.
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Nicole Long @dorsolateralpfc.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
My lab is hiring! We are recruiting a full time research coordinator to support our projects on memory brain states. More info and application: jobs.virginia.edu/us/en/job/R0...
jobs.virginia.edu
Research Coordinator, Long Term Memory Lab - Psychology in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America | Other at University of Virginia
Apply for Research Coordinator, Long Term Memory Lab - Psychology job with University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America. Other at University of Virginia
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Reposted by Liz Chrastil
Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 10/06/2026
Another handful of sand in the gears: Researchers cannot serve on a panel *at all* if anyone from their institution has submitted to that panel. Recusing themselves for the proposal itself is no longer sufficient. This is needless, but will certainly slow things up even further.
science.org
NSF imposes stricter conflict-of-interest rules for grant-review panels
Researchers say changes could further burden the understaffed agency
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 06/06/2026
Remember the current NIH director going on about protecting researchers from government censorship? Today his people called the police in to forcibly remove my colleagues from their own society meeting for sharing an editorial published in their flagship journal that was critical of him. Gift link
nytimes.com
Police Remove Diabetes Experts From Conference for Distributing Critique of Trump Administration
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 29/05/2026
"The plan is to kill off publicly funded academic science in this country." Correct. And that means killing off the whole US science and innovation industry. Because it's all built on a foundation of basic research—which. can. only. be. funded. by. public. dollars.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 29/05/2026
If these changes go through, it will be impossible to do effective science in the United States. Logistically, labs will not be able to function under these constraints. Team science—vital to almost every discipline—will be impossible under the rules around international collaboration.
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Trish Greenhalgh @trishgreenhalgh.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...
slate.com
Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning
Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.
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Liz Chrastil @chrastil.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Both positions involve working with immersive virtual reality, MRI, participant recruitment, and data analysis. In addition to spatial navigation, work in my lab relates to learning and memory, aging and Alzheimer's disease, computational modeling, and decision making.
recruit.ap.uci.edu
Junior/Assistant Specialist (Reference Frames) - Chrastil Lab
University of California, Irvine is hiring. Apply now!
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Liz Chrastil @chrastil.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
My lab is hiring two full-time research assistants! One position is for a project on spatial navigation across the lifespan, with a focus on midlife aging and menopause. The other is for functional imaging and spatial reference frames. recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF10136 recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF10137
recruit.ap.uci.edu
Junior/Assistant Specialist (Reference Frames) - Chrastil Lab
University of California, Irvine is hiring. Apply now!
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Reposted by Liz Chrastil
Ignacio GHOULlup-Diaz @igallupd.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
"Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial: Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later."
nbcnews.com
Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial
Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later.
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
This is very very big. Like a big deal and massive cuts. These can’t even be seen as budgetary since you don’t get much savings in the context of trillions budget. They want the US out of R&D out of science research.
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Reposted by Liz Chrastil
Pam Davis-Kean, PhD @umpamdk.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
The NSF 2027 budget has noted that they will close out the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Program (SBE). This is not a good thing. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
BREAKING: In response to huge cuts in Trump's budget request, NSF is shuttering its SBE directorate. Staff will be transferred to other parts of the agency and "grants that align with Administration priorities" will be maintained. That & more w/ @maxkozlov.bsky.social & @edwrdchen.bsky.social
nature.com
Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration
Budget proposal would also curb federal payments for scientific publishing.
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Erin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴 @wamsleylab.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Directorate has awarded only 16 grants since October. No big budget cuts went through. No freeze. The courts have acted to keep funds flowing at every turn. The money just isn't going out. Why...? 1/x source: grant-witness.us/funding_curv... 🟦🧠 #academicsky
A line graph showing awards over time at NSF's SBE. The line for this year, 2026, is extremely FLAT compared to prior years. By this time in 2025, 179 grants had been awarded. In 2021, it was 243. This year... 16.
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Eitan Schechtman @eitans.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Happy to share some of the work done in our lab in this mega-thread of nine (!) papers/preprints (+1 sneak peek) from the last six months. Here goes (in no particular order)! **Please repost** and let me know if you need access to any of the PDFs! #sleeppeeps #sleep #neuroscience 1/12
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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
The is the federal government telling news stations to provide favorable coverage of the war or their licenses will be pulled. A truly extraordinary moment. We aren't on the verge of a totalitarian takeover. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. Act like it.
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Donald Trump letting you know how the authoritarian capture of the media is going, in case you missed it. Unlike other authoritarians in places like Hungary and Poland he has no worries about advertising his authoritarian take over of the media.
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Jeffrey Vagle @jvagle.me · 21/02/2026
“Everyone thinks universities have to do what donors want because they pay the bills. But that gets it backward, and not just at Hopkins.” I highly recommend reading this piece. www.publicbooks.org/the-misuses-...
publicbooks.org
The Misuses of the University - Public Books
Have the funds that might have trained the next generation of scholars at the nation’s first research university have been blown on ostentatious new buildings?
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Eric Umansky @ericumansky.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
This case is insane: ICE shot and killed a citizen last March then *hid it for a year.* The young man they killed had no criminal history. All we know about shooting is from internal ICE docs. We don't know officers' names. We don't have footage. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/u...
nytimes.com
A Fatal ICE Shooting Occurred in Texas Months Before Renee Good’s Killing
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Nanthia Suthana @suthanalab.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
We’re hiring! The Suthana Lab @ Duke is looking for a Research Assistant to join our team studying human memory & real-world 🧠 dynamics using wearable tech & intracranial recordings. Apply: careers.duke.edu/job/Durham-C... You can also email suthanalab@duke.edu with CV/questions. Please share!
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Erin Lockwood @erinkaylockwood.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
It shouldn't take having a 5yo to be sick imagining the terror felt by a child still little enough to be held and rocked when scary things happen and by his frantic family members, but I do have a 5yo and thinking of this little guy shoved into a van, a cell, a plane, another van, another cell ...
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Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · 20/12/2025
Multidisciplinary training, over time, produces the highest impact people www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
Scientists have long debated the origins of exceptional human achievements. This literature review summarizes recent evidence from multiple domains on the acquisition of world-class performance. We re...
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Melissa Ryan @melissaryan.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
The way to make this matter is for the outrage from the general public to become more of a problem than the Trump Regime's outrage. A thing we know is possible from Jimmy Kimmel. So far, so good. Keep going.
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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
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.
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Liz Chrastil @chrastil.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Huge congratulations to my students Erica and Daniela who defended their PhD thesis this week! Plus a rainbow after one of them, seems very fitting for the whole process!
Me and EricaA rainbowDaniela with committee: me, Craig Stark, Liz Head
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Emily G. Jacobs @emilyjacobs.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
👀 💕 👏🏽 @laurapritschet.bsky.social @chrastil.bsky.social
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Liz Chrastil @chrastil.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
Come see our lab's posters at #SfN2025! With great work including @alinatu.bsky.social @mjstarrett.bsky.social @aaronbornstein.bsky.social and more!
Lab posters every day in the afternoon sessions
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Jaweed Kaleem @jaweedkaleem.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
In a major win for UC faculty groups and unions that sued, a federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump from imposing a $1.2-billion fine on UCLA along with stipulations for deep campus changes in exchange for being eligible for federal grants: www.latimes.com/california/s...
latimes.com
Judge blocks Trump administration push to fine UCLA $1.2 billion for alleged antisemitism
A federal judge late Friday issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from imposing a $1.2-billion fine on UCLA for alleged civil rights violations over antisemitism, its recog...
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Amanda Litman @amandalitman.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Want a party that actually fights back? Run for office. We’ll help you. runforwhat.net
runforwhat.net
Run for Something
Find offices you can run for
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Erin Lockwood @erinkaylockwood.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
I wonder what it feels like to be so alienated from God and humanity that causing the deaths of over half a million people doesn't wrack your entire body and soul, doesn't tear you apart with grief and horror, doesn't haunt your every waking moment and torment your every minute of sleep.
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 01/11/2025
“Of all the words spoken in opposition to, or aghast at what’s happening in the United States, only one set of remarks has rattled in my head day after day, for going on a month now.” Compelling and insightful article today from @brianbeutler.bsky.social 1/
offmessage.net
The Defiant Resistance Speech An American Should Have Given
There's power waiting to be claimed by an ambitious political figure who makes this his or her cause.
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Nina Rouhani @ninarouhani.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
I will be recruiting 🌟PhD students🌟 for my newish lab! If you're interested in learning & memory mechanisms applied to individual, interactive & collective behavior using computational modeling, real-world experiments and fMRI, email me! RTs much appreciated 🙏 rouhanilab.com
rouhanilab.com
Interactive Cognition Lab | USC
Interactive Cognition Lab at USC, led by principal investigator, Dr. Nina Rouhani.
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Angie Rasmussen @angierasmussen.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
I don’t know who needs to hear this but the CDC is being eviscerated right now. America is not going to have any kind of outbreak response capacity after tonight. Americans’ health data is no longer secure. Say goodbye to federal public health in any capacity. It’s a disaster. We won’t recover.
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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
BREAKING: A federal judge has granted a restraining order blocking President Trump's call-up of the National Guard in Portland. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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Rosa Lafer-Sousa @rosalafersousa.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
🚨 Are you an alum from one of the 9 universities Trump is attempting to extort right now? ✍️ Sign this petition to defend your university, free speech, and democracy. I signed. This is a time for courage, not capitulation. #JustSayNo #Compact 🧪🧠🧬 (context in thread)
alumni.controlshift.app
Trump attacks 9 universities: Sign the alumni petition to defend your school now
Are you an alum outraged by Trump's attacks on universities? Defend your school now by signing this alumni petition in support of these 9 universities as well as campus communities across America.
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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
ER doc here! This is a lie. Wait times are up because the American healthcare system is an unsustainable business model and a for-profit national healthcare system just doesn’t work. These problems will continue to get worse until we change that system. It literally has nothing to do with immigrants
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 30/09/2025
the president of the united states wants to use the american military to kill american citizens on american soil. that's the whole story!
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Jaweed Kaleem @jaweedkaleem.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
The NIH has confirmed that it is complying with court orders and re-instating $500 million in frozen research grants to UCLA, Vice Chancellor for Research & Creative Activities Roger Wakimoto wrote today. He says workers “have shown great resilience in this challenging time.”
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 24/09/2025
Huntington’s disease treated successfully for first time in gene therapy trial
theguardian.com
Huntington’s disease treated successfully for first time in gene therapy trial
UCL trialled hours-long surgical procedure to treat disease which causes dementia and paralysis Huntington’s disease, a devastating degenerative illness that runs in families, has been treated successfully for the first time in a breakthrough gene therapy trial. The disease, caused by a single gene defect, steadily kills brain cells leading to dementia, paralysis and ultimately death. Those with a parent with Huntington’s have a 50% chance of developing the disease, which until now has been incurable. Continue reading...
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Rheum Cat @rheumcat.bsky.social · 21/09/2025
While I am genuinely concerned for my colleagues who are doctors currently on H1B visas, I acknowledge that I can't make people care about other humans. But American *should* care about the fact that their ability to get medical care WILL be affected by these visa restrictions.
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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
Asking journalists to sign a pledge not to disclose anything the Pentagon doesn’t want you to see just as Pentagon is: -sending troops into US cities -illegally murdering alleged low level drug runners -possibly preparing to invade Venezuela
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