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levinchem.bsky.social
Associate Professor of Chemistry University of Chicago Single-Atom Skeletal Editing (Interspersed with doomposting and AI skepticism) Husband, Dad, Crossword Addict http://levingroup.uchicago.edu
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Now with page numbers, and prettier figures: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

You feel bad. But do not think you’re lucky it’s not you. It’s not you *yet*. Call your reps and senators. Push back. We need science. Don’t let them break NIH.

The cuts and RIFs are obviously the worst part, but the wild uncertainty of it all is an especially unnerving element that makes the whole thing very hard to process and contest

Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab

This one hits home: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/o...

Not to diminish everything else going on, but there was a time not too long ago when “NSF loses all Division Directors” would have been the kind of thing that everybody stopped and noticed and talked about for days. And now it’s just Thursday night.

Man who gave arsonist permission to keep burning houses draws line at his own home being set ablaze

you know who else came from chicago and was on "a mission from god"

I hope the new pope calls for Italians to tolerate the Chicago pizza.

applying for jobs again

I have a simple solution to this. Grade students entirely by means of three hour hand-written exams in a big hall with no computers. If they all fail because they never learned to write without AI, sucks to be them

The miracle with Chinese dumplings to me, is they make everyone else's stuffed noodles look like trash *despite* the fillings generally being nothing special. It's a kind of sorcery. People are out here with truffles and fine cheese and can't beat ginger, soy sauce, and vegetable scraps.

GenAI's most reasonable applications are as call-center replacements and as search engines, but both are cases where lying is costly. A search engine that makes stuff up and omits relevant things is worse than no search engine at all

Every decision from this administration is like a doctor saying we are removing this vital organ because it uses blood

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Pocket guide to materials discovery calculation methods (repost from the other place)

common knowledge among chemists: compressed gas cylinders basically last forever. some date back to WW2. those used in Nazi Germany (Linde) were marked with swastikas. after the war, the swastikas were defaced into "windowpanes" ⊞ — you can still find such cylinders in the wild today. #chemsky ⚗️🧪

Wed 4/30 #nytxw - is this a generational thing or is that a serious Natick at 5A/5D? Definitely never heard of 5D and that is some of the more obscure cluing for 5A I've seen

Sometimes when I read news about scientists using genAI, I feel like I am being pranked. I cannot find a remotely reasonable premise for this - what in the world were they expecting?

"The half-life of this administration is two years; the half-life of the damage to American competitiveness is probably measured in decades." www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/o...

😱 😱 😱 Major life goal achieved, though not for the reasons I’d hoped. I will be on @thisamericanlife.org tomorrow. 🧪 www.thisamericanlife.org/859/chaos-gr...

It's not just Columbia, it's not just DEI, and it's not just biomedical research: Trump's war on universities has frozen crucial science at institutions like Princeton, Cornell, Northwestern, and more. Our @nature.com team spoke to some of the affected scientists: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

NEWS: After canceling thousands of foreign students' immigration records — threatening their ability to study and live in the US — the Trump administration has reversed course and restored them all. It follows intense pushback from courts across the country. Details TK

The UChicago Department of Chemistry is thrilled to welcome Dr. Alex Cusumano to its faculty. His expertise in synthetic organic, organometallic, and computational chemistry will be a valuable asset to our research and educational initiatives. shorturl.at/hqRZK

Exclusive: The director of the National Science Foundation announced his resignation today, 16 months before his 6-year term ends, in a letter to staff obtained by Science. scim.ag/42vc3fn

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/o...

Harvard sued the Trump admin today 💪🏽🥳💯 www.harvard.edu/research-fun...

Thoughts on Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind saying that AI could cure disease in general in ten years. Bonus index to my longer posts on AI/computational drug discovery over nearly 20 years!

‘Up until now, skeletal editing has, for better or for worse, been synonymous with late-stage functionalisation,’ says co-corresponding author @levinchem.bsky.social. ‘But actually, there are other reasons you might want to do skeletal editing.’

(no words)

News story from UChicago: news.uchicago.edu/story/uchica...

Per source, NIH has been instructed to hold off from issuing ALL awards to Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Brown, and Northwestern (including med schools) Agency staff have also been instructed to not speak about this funding freeze to grantees and applicants

Now available from Enamine! new.enaminestore.com/catalog/EN30...

Thanks to @chemistryworld.com for covering our paper! www.chemistryworld.com/news/reimagi...