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Nancy Mack, PhD

@nancyrmack.bsky.social
75 followers 133 following 4 posts

NIMH F32 Brain Initiative Fellow @ Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Dr. Cate Peña @cate-cholamine.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
So proud to have “Early-life stress alters H3K4me1 in VTA to prime stress sensitivity” out now in Neuron! This work spanned Many years and Many people contributed. Huge thanks to @hyejaykim.bsky.social, @ja-balouek.bsky.social, Luke Geiger, and Meaghan Creed www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
cell.com
Early-life stress alters H3K4me1 in VTA to prime stress sensitivity
Kim, Geiger et al. report that early-life stress increases the chromatin modification H3K4me1 and its enzymatic writer, SETD7, in the ventral tegmental area. They show that this form of epigenetic pri...
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Marija Kundakovic @kundakoviclab.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
Extremely excited & proud to share our new preprint - we provide for the first time a single cell map of the mouse brain across sex, the estrous cycle, and peripartum! Data are 🔥 👇 "Single-cell map of the female brain across reproductive transitions" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Kurt Fraser @kurtfraser.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
FYI to anyone applying
question: Hello, Could you please comment on using words like female and DEI which we were warned to avoid using in the propsals. 

answer: his question falls in the category of Broader Impacts.  In addressing this Merit Review Criterion, investigators should prioritize the first six broader impacts goals as defined by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. Investigators wishing to address goal seven — expanding participation in STEM for women and underrepresented groups — must ensure that all outreach, recruitment, or participatory activities in NSF projects are open and available to all Americans. Investigators may conduct these types of engagement activities to individuals, institutions, groups, or communities based on protected characteristics only as part of broad engagement activities. Investigators may also expand participation in STEM based on non-protected characteristics, including but not limited to institutional type, geography, socioeconomic status, and career stage. However, engagement activities aimed at these characteristics cannot indirectly preference or exclude individuals/groups based on protected characteristics.
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
A bifunctional optical reporter for tracking estrogen response dynamics in neurons www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Meenakshi Asokan @meenakshiasokan.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Check this out! It was such a pleasure capturing her story!
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Annegret Falkner @neurrriot.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Love how this project came together with the amazing @endoeartha.bsky.social ! Have you wondered about the role that testosterone plays in the ability to re-pattern social behavior when you are at home in your "territory" vs away? We have answers for you...
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Meenakshi Asokan @meenakshiasokan.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Check this out!! Neat unsupervised quantifications of rich social behavior, while simultaneously recording from the entire hormone-sensitive subcortical social behavior network. Massive effort, congrats @endoeartha.bsky.social !!
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Carlos Brody @carlosbrody.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Thank you @nancyrmack.bsky.social and @princetonneuro.bsky.social for a great explainer about our paper! pni.princeton.edu/news/2025/wh...
pni.princeton.edu
When a rat makes up its mind, these neuroscientists know
Scientists can now freeze-frame the exact moment an animal makes up their mind and commits to a choice — simply by looking at their brain activity
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
America's Lab @americas-lab.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
3D printing has a wide variety of applications, from birthday present gimmicks to usage in state-of-the-art science projects, but did you know the technology has its roots in government-funded reseacrh? Read more: publicusaresearchbenefits.com/examples/202...
publicusaresearchbenefits.com
3D Printing Wasn't Always This Easy
The invention of 3D printing allowing for efficient prototyping
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
America's Lab @americas-lab.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
It's hard to imagine a world without GPS, letting us get to unfamiliar places with the greatest of ease. But did you know that GPS initially started as a federally funded project under the department of defense? Learn more at: publicusaresearchbenefits.com/examples/202...
publicusaresearchbenefits.com
GPS (Global Positioning System)
Department of Defense-funded research led to the Global Positioning System that powers how we map where we are on our phones
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Scott Delaney @scott-delaney.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
My ongoing request: If your NSF or NIH grant was terminated--whether at Harvard or elsewhere--please report it here. NSF: grant-watch.us/submit-nsf.h... NIH: grant-watch.us/submit-nih.h... Our trackers are actively used in lawsuits and are often the only record that terminations ever occurred.
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Alexander Harris @dralexharris.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
The joy of a new baby can turn into a nightmare when the mom develops postpartum depression. Federally funded research developed a new fast acting medicine to help those moms. publicusaresearchbenefits.com/examples/202... Ask Congress to save science. #FundingScienceSavesLives
publicusaresearchbenefits.com
Treatment for postpartum depression
NIH funding for basic research led to new and effective treatment for postpartum depression
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Calling all science advocates!! Carlos Brody+ are creating a searchable database of tangible science benefits, and they need you. publicusaresearchbenefits.com They are asking for suggestions - from brief to lengthy. The database is state-searchable, so all 50 states. Please spread the word!
publicusaresearchbenefits.com
Searchable database of tangible benefits that federally-funded research gave us.
A crowd-sourced site. Health and Well-being. National Security. Prosperity.
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Scott Delaney @scott-delaney.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
Our database of terminated grants is powered first by PIs who send us information about their grants. If your grant was terminated--or if you received a stop work order of some sort--let us know! forms.gle/8qWNSjBerJ1G...
forms.gle
Cancelled NIH grant information submission form
Please use this form to submit information identifying specific NIH grants that have been cancelled for any reason after January 20, 2025. Data from this form will be used to update the Terminated NI...
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Crystal Fleming is on sabbatical @alwaystheself.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
They handed the American people on a silver platter over to a dictator-CEO for the price of bitcoin and a bratwurst.
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
UAW @uaw.org · 14/03/2025
🧵 IN SHOCKING MOVE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY FIRES UNION PRESIDENT ONE DAY BEFORE CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS BEGIN, IN FURTHER CRACKDOWN ON FREE SPEECH
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Sam Wang @samwang.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Every college and university in the United States should take notice of the real lesson here. It's not to give in. The lesson is that with this crew, if you cave, they take it as a sign of weakness. When a sheep is cornered by the wolf, it's not a great move to lie down and show the belly.
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Nancy Mack, PhD @nancyrmack.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Incredible turn out in Philadelphia today! I spy my poster👀
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
eartha mae @endoeartha.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
My speech for the Philly #StandUpForScience Protest. Everything I do is for my community 💜✨
Hello Philadelphia! 

 I’m Dr. Eartha Mae Guthman. I’m a Philadelphian, a trans woman, a neuroscientist, and a proud card carrying union member with UAW. I first worked in a lab 15 years ago. I fell in love then and there with the scientific method, and I've worked as a scientist ever since. 

Today, I want to talk to you about how this administration’s attacks on trans people and trans health research harm us all.

When I began transitioning seven years ago, I was terrified! For my safety. For my scientific career. Would my colleagues find me credible? Would they see a scientist who happened to be trans, or would they only see me through the lens of my transness? I decided then, regardless of the outcome, I would dedicate my life to improving healthcare for trans people. 

For the past seven years I’ve worked towards this goal. I’ve spent holidays inventing new tools to study the brain and behavior. I’ve spent weeks going to work after dark, sitting with my mice to run overnight experiments, and then coming home, crossing the Delaware with the sunrise. 

I’ve been fortunate to have achieved success in my work: I’ve published over a dozen papers, including guides on how to develop animal models for hormone therapy; I’ve been awarded highly competitive NSF and NIH grants; I’ve been appointed a fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies and at other academic organizations.
And, about a year ago, I received the best news of my career:

I had been awarded a prestigious NIH grant to not only fund my research at Princeton, but to provide me funding to start my own lab. 

In my lab, I want to ask questions about how hormones impact the brain to influence mood, the body, and behavior. I want to apply this research to design better hormone therapies– yes, for gender affirming care, but also for birth control, menopause, endometriosis, PCOS, the list goes on! My goal, set so many years ago, was within my grasp. I had put in the work and sacrifice, taken the risks, and it had all seemed worth it. 

But my dream grows less likely by the day because of Republican efforts to reverse decades of acceptance for various minorities. Through anti-DEI and anti-trans executive orders and laws, the administration seeks to restore hierarchies centered around race and gender, resegregating America. A textbook example of fascism and fascist takeover of institutions.
Trump’s anti-DEI and anti-trans executive orders censor me and those like me. At the State of the Union on Tuesday, Trump complained that NIH wasted money on “transgender mice”, directly attacking the work my colleagues and I do. Wednesday, a White House press release called trans health research “fraud” and “waste”. Yesterday, Nature reported that the administration has bypassed congressional control of the budget to terminate ongoing grants related to trans healthcare. They report that the NIH will terminate hundreds of already awarded, active research grants if they support DEI or trans people in any way. 

I don't know how or if I’ll get paid next month, and I don't know if I’ll actually get the funds that congress has already awarded me to start my lab.   

I don't know what's going to happen to my career, and I'm really fucking furious. I've dedicated my entire adult life to this work. But to Trump and his supporters, I am not a scientist who should be judged for the work I do, who happens to be trans. To them, I am trans, and therefore cannot contribute to science because I’m inherently biased and unfit.
But I'm here speaking to you now because this moment is about more than just me. Under the guise of this anti-trans and anti-DEI moral panic, Republicans are weaponizing the state to attack all science. Their actions prevent us from making life-saving discoveries across all fields. 

They see science as a tool to control people and carve their desired reality into our bodies and minds, not as a way to understand our beautifully complex world. 

But we can stop them. Because we are many, and they are so, very, very few. 

Right now we need to give our legislators hell until they start standing up for us. Push universities to establish contingency funds for researchers whose active funding is terminated.

And keep showing up, keep protesting. Keep standing up to cruel bullies and fascists. Don’t comply with unjust orders or demands, fight back! Fight for a world where the next scientist like me is seen for her contributions to science and human health, not seen only as trans. And lastly, fight for a world that loves and values trans people.
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Sam Wang @samwang.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Going to the Stand Up For Science rally at noon today? If you can't get to the big one in Washington DC, find one close to you. I'll speak at Trenton. An advance copy of my remarks: samwang.substack.com/p/stand-up-f...
samwang.substack.com
Stand Up For Science - remarks in Trenton
Working together for science and democracy
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Ashley Juavinett, PhD @ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
So many students are curious about science funding and not at all in the know. This is the perfect moment to fill them in. www.thetransmitter.org/how-to-teach...
thetransmitter.org
How to teach students about science funding
As researchers reel over the uncertain state of U.S. federal funding, educating students on the business of science is more important than ever.
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Nancy Mack, PhD @nancyrmack.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
See you there!
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Reposted by Nancy Mack, PhD
Annika Barber @annikabarber.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
📣 Public protest is legal! 📣 Come out and @standupforscience.bsky.social in Trenton, NJ where we have a rally site permit, a sound permit, and portapotties! Hear from former state rep Rush Holt, profs in climate science, biomedicine, and public health from Rider, TCNJ, Rutgers and Princeton!
Stand up for science flyer for Trenton rally at 145 W. State St on March 7th at 12 pm. RSVP at http://tiny.cc/SUFSTrenton25
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
A large portion of grants awarded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health cannot be funded for the foreseeable future because of an indefinite hold on submissions to the Federal Register, according to an email reviewed by The Transmitter. By @avaskham.bsky.social bit.ly/3X8ngz8
thetransmitter.org
Federal Register hold makes ‘end run’ around court pause on NIH funding freeze
NIH-related updates to the Federal Register, which are required for the scheduling of study sections and advisory councils, are on hold indefinitely, according to an email reviewed by <i>The Transmitt...
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