iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

eartha mae @endoeartha.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Extremely proud to share @acara333.bsky.social and my new paper, out today in @cp-neuron.bsky.social, where we develop a new fluorescent reporter of neural responses to estrogen! 🔬 paper 📝: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... addgene page 🧬: www.addgene.org/254753/ #neuroskyence 🧪 1/10

graphical abstract of the manuscript depicting pink estrogen-sensitive neurons with a subset of their nuclei colored in green. These green nuclei represent estrogen receptor dependent neural gene transcription, tracked via the expression of a destabilized GFP with a 2 hour half-life. At top, in green is shown a cartoon of the neural response to estrogen across two estrous cycles, and below there is a cartoon of a mouse implanted with an optic fiber for in vivo imaging.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

We're all born men and the rest is drag or whatever Judith butler said

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

They're building directed acyclic graphs of your polycule

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Megan G. Massa @megangmassa.com · 27/07/2026

What's the connection between anti-trans and anti-intersex legislation, the defunding of science, and the scientific study of sex? It's all part of the same playbook. 🧵 Super proud to explore this and encourage creative solutions in my latest published commentary: doi.org/10.1093/icb/... (1/6)

doi.org

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Anyone know what the tea is with the UC PPFP and the hiring incentive? What is going ON with the funding lines atm?!??! #AcademicSky

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Sarah T Roberts, PhD @ubiquity75.xyz · 02/11/2025

The President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, PPFP, has been a jewel in the crown for faculty development and recruitment at the University of California for years and the results have been an expanded faculty with almost 100% tenure rates — unprecedented success.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Zara Weinberg was a brilliant light both in and out of science. She changed the lives of everyone she interacted and loved for the better. Her legacy will live on through all of us and we will fight for a better world on behalf of her memory.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

Excited to announce that I am joining the Aharoni lab @ UCLA as a postdoc! Looking forward to building open source infrastructures for Miniscopes and more!!!

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

That's sister with SUCH a cool paper!!

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

What can you even say at this point?

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Bending over to promote a genocide at great expense and STILL losing their federal funding.... I have to laugh.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Signed my IRACDA contract for the year only for NIH and NSF to pull some bullshit and suspend all grants to UCLA.... GIRL......

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Excuse my language but what fucking business is it of the united states government whether Brown undertakes this kind of medical care for parents and their kids who fully consent to it and desire it? Insanity! Pure discrimination in an agreement trollingly cloaked in preventing discrimination.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

How it feels not wading into the JGP discourse on this Monday

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Funding restored for one more year

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Wtf is "brain on a chip" supposed to look like lmao. Ofc it's PETA backed too

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

L.A. TACO @lataco.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

L.A. TACO has confirmed that Adrian Andrew Martinez, the 20yr-old US citizen taken by federal agents while working at Walmart in Pico Rivera, is being held at the federal building in downtown L.A. ~ Aisha Wallace-Palomares reporting.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Pls not the 2016 "ur valid" approach!! Instead tell them one way or another we WILL make sure they get the access they need.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Cat's out of the bag!!! Super excited to be a part of this incredible community!

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Dr. Dawn Wright @deepseadawn.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

**Rapid Response Bridge Funding Program** -- $25,000 grants earmarked for early-career researchers whose NSF-funded research on STEM and education has just been terminated. www.spencer.org/grant_types/... hub.jhu.edu/2025/04/28/j... Thanks @lizneeley.bsky.social !

spencer.org

Rapid Response Bridge Funding Program

In the face of recent abrupt shifts in federal funding for education research, including large-scale terminations of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant awards, we have developed a rap...

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Dr Heidy Khlaaf (هايدي خلاف) @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

It's still really unbelievable how the IDF just bombed Al Ahli hospital, the last standing hospital in Gaza, with its patients and doctors and there is not one post about it to be found on this website.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

OK so if anyone has any leads on private postdoc fellowships or funding sources lmk!!! Hopeful about this ACLU lawsuit but need to still think practically to make sure I have a paycheck.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Well divas... I want to say it's over but my delusion says it's not quite over yet.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Excellent article sent by a friend. Really highlights a number of fears and thoughts I have re: the legal deterrence during this time therealcornpop.substack.com/p/the-us-is-...

therealcornpop.substack.com

This is How the US Will End the Pro-Palestine Movement

The Trap is Set

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Why the fuck would you publicly host instructions on how to cross ref federal records for trans identification? Do you not see how dangerous this is???

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Anne Kosseff-Jones @annekosseffjones.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

My incarcerated colleague Angel Ayala sent me this message from where he’s being held in solitary confinement. I’m sharing with his blessing—for me it connects deeply to @prisonculture.bsky.social ‘s wisdom that incarcerated people are the original victims of the fascism that’s engulfing us all.

Image of a prison messaging app. The first two worlds are blacked out to avoid confusion and then the text reads, “I always hear about ‘the soul of the nation,” but I think the soul is HERE, trapped and suffering. Each person is like a unit in the delicate infrastructure of society, and each strike against each unit is a strike against our own wellbeing, against the pillars of a healthy society,, infrastructure decaying and society collapsing here before your eyes.”

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Drop Site @dropsitenews.com · 18/03/2025

REPORT: Information from the Ministry of Health database reveals that 73% of those killed in Israeli strikes today are children, women, or the elderly.

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Jay Edidin @edidin.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Some advice on activism and feeling less helpless: You probably cannot make a big change by yourself. That's okay. Find a thing you can do--either joining an existing thing or starting something small that you can sustain with resources you have--and start there.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Well..... How are we doing today

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Dr. William Horne @wihorne.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Just to spell this out: you, too, are not breaking the law. Versions of this could happen to any of us.

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, 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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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Getting cited by the BBC is kind of iconic I think

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

OK maybe one last thought on all this handwringing: cis people don't have to benefit from research focused on models of trans health for that science to be seen as valid. It's perfectly fine to ask a trans specific question and obtain a trans specific answer.

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 06/03/2025

Scientists who are actively against fascism because fascism is bad, not just because sometimes it hurts scientists, are my people

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Why are you all so afraid of admitting these are models that would help trans healthcare. BOO! There are mouse models examining the effects of hormones in multiple capacities. Now what?

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Obviously his framing is bigoted but I do want to say that while gender isn't studied in animal models, variables influencing sex are. It's easy to scoff at the concept of "transgender mice" but animal models for hormone therapies DO exist (see our paper). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35863692/

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Centering the Needs of Transgender, Nonbinary, and Gender-Diverse Populations in Neuroendocrine Models of Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy - PubMed

Most studies attempting to address the health care needs of the millions of transgender, nonbinary, and/or gender-diverse (TNG) individuals rely on human subjects, overlooking the benefits of translat...

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

How it feels trying to run experiments while all these anti-trans actions get pushed federally

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

I think we should abolish gender markers on all forms of ID including passports

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

SBN has been so consistently supportive it's been refreshing to see. When @megangmassa.com and I were being attacked by Ben Shapiro and co for our paper they issued a statement reiterating how they stood by us and our work.

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Krisha Aghi, PhD @phdoll.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Zohran Mamdani is MIRA NAIR'S SON?!

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Scott Barolo @sbarolo.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

I’d like to sincerely thank various scholars and activists on Bluesky, especially Black scholars and activists, for giving me the language to express that “anti-DEI” means “segregationist”. That concept has been very helpful in forming my resolve to fight the efforts to re-segregate my university.

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Reposted by Krisha Aghi, PhD

Daniel Colón-Ramos @dacolon.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Ardem, I am sorry. In this middle of this chaos, HHMI will always hold the dubious distinction of being the first organization, federal or private, to cut an ongoing and funded DEI program. In the darkest hour, it ran for the hills. As a member of those groups, I can’t tell you how painful this is.

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