Archive for National Science Foundation
mass decimation of U.S. science
Posted in Statistics with tags @ScientistTrump, antivaxers, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chaos, Department of Government Efficiency, Department of Health and Human Services, FDA, federal agencies, federal scientists, firing, National Science Foundation, NIH, Science, Trump administration, Trump tracker, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, unions, US elections 2024, US politics on March 14, 2025 by xi'an
more [Natural] chaos!
Posted in Statistics with tags @ScientistTrump, CDCP, censoring, data apocalypse, diversity, Donald Trump, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Nature, NSF, Purge, research grant, Trump administration, US politics on February 8, 2025 by xi'an
Panch at the helm!
Posted in pictures, Travel, University life with tags Canada, Electrical Engineering, ERC, European Research Council, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, National Science Foundation, Nature, NSF, Ottawa, Senate, Trump, University of Ottawa, USA on January 8, 2020 by xi'an
Reading somewhat by chance a Nature article on the new Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) nominated by Trump (and yet to be confirmed by the Senate), I found that his name Sethuraman Panchanathan was the name of a friend of my wife 30⁺ years ago when they were both graduate students in image processing at the University of Ottawa, Department of Electrical Engineering… And looking further into the matter, I realised that this was indeed the very friend we knew from that time, with whom w shared laughs, dinners, and a few day trips together around Ottawa! While this is not the ultimate surprise, given that science administration is usually run by scientists, taken from a population pool that is not that large, as exemplified by earlier cases at the national or European level where I had some acquaintance with a then senior officer, it is nonetheless striking (and fun) to hear of a friend moving to a high visibility position after such a long gap. (When comparing NSF and ERC, the European Research Council, with French mathematician Jean-Pierre Bourguignon as current director also appearing in a recent Nature article, I was surprised to see that the ERC budget was more than twice the NSF budget.) Well, good luck to him for sailing these highly political waters!
