Emma J Chory

Evolution navigated billions of challenges to get to us to where we are today. Directed evolution compresses this to 1D axis. Imagine if you could sample 200 dimensions at once, with data to boot 📈 First @chorylab PACE preprint on our new system to tackle this: TurboPRANCE👇

@wait_sasha I’m criticizing that writing a protocol this poor for something with actual biosafety risks is a concern in itself. LV protocols are all over the internet, but this would get a C- at best on a lab report. I hope none of my students see this and think it is okay.

@chorye Good and bad actors will always use the tools available—including AI—to automate wet biology work. Are you criticizing authors for publishing? If highschool students use AI for their synthetic biology projects, do you find that awesome or terrifying? Cf. competition.igem.org/high-school

BIOMNI AI be like, “Cloning protocol? here’s sufficient detail to execute on a robot.” BSL2+ lentivirus production & transduction protocol? “Just do it.” Cool cool cool cool cool. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

@NmrReyez Lentivirus transduction protocols are readily available all over protocols.io, Addgene, etc. Writing this poor of a protocol with true biosafety needs would get an undergrad fired, at best, if not create serious contamination or biohazard risks.

@chorye this isn’t a problem you are just a shizoid

Just an average day in the Chory Lab. We’re hiring! Come work with us and do cool stuff. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/Duke/BME/D…

A grant cap tells scientists there is a limit to their discoveries. The entire capitalist critique of communism is literally that when you put ceilings on what people are allowed to aspire to, collective ambition shrinks, and innovation becomes less likely. I would really encourage people to do a quick RePORTER search for a few HHMI faculty or recipients of NIH Pioneer, Transformative Research R01, or Outstanding Investigator R35 awards, and look at how many NIH grants they had when they reached that level.

@anshulkundaje @BarakRotblat @chorye There is something deeply skewed with your perspective. Only a few percent of NIH funded PIs hold more than 2 R01s at a given time. Most won't leave if a cap of 2 was put in place. And the US academic biomedical research enterprise will be just fine if a few do leave.

In other news, today the NIH proposed caping the maximum of grants at 2 per research lab, including collaborations. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/n… We're living in the upside down.

@EmmaKoory @BarakRotblat @anshulkundaje Name twin!! Pronounced the same too! Lebanese as well??

@chorye @BarakRotblat @anshulkundaje It has about half the purchasing power today in comparison to when it was capped at $250k in 1999! (Also hi name twin!!!!)

@GuzowskiLab 😞 x.com/chorye/status/…

@chorye @BarakRotblat @anshulkundaje The rate of a modular R01 was $250kin 2000, the year of my first R01. This has not sustainable for over a decade.

@Farsh_G Thank you so much Farsh!!

@chorye Congrats Emma!

Deeply honored to be named a 2026 Beckman Young Investigator #BYI!🧬 This recognition reflects the creativity and hard work of my incredible lab, and we are so grateful and excited for the Foundation's support as we tackle the next generation of continuous evolution.

@anshulkundaje @PracheeAC Not for nothing, but a 1% annual wealth tax on U.S. billionaires would raise roughly twice the NIH's entire annual budget. and then we could just stop having these dumb twitter convos....🫠

@PracheeAC @chorye Well then maybe we should advocate for more NIH funding instead of chopping the legs of many labs that need more than 2 grants to be competitive.

@arjunrajlab Nothing to see here.

At some point we have to ask ourselves: what are we doing here? I am old enough to remember when an R01 was sufficient to run a mid-size lab. Now it's effectively a postdoc fellowship. I don't think that is healthy for science. At some point, we have to make some hard decisions.

@Deak_Lab True, but 2 R01s is not a megalab, it's a minimum tenure requirement.

@chorye This is one reasonable concern that I have as well. The cap should have grace periods allowing for controlled contractions to protect students. However I do not think a contraction of a mega-lab is an objectively bad thing.

I get it, but you think the solution is for well established mid career faculty with productive research groups to just all of a sudden layoff 75% of their team? This would kill collabs, R03/R21s, & core grants. Selling it as equitable reallocation is just another way to make destruction of science seem more palatable.

@chorye Just to clarify, they are asking for opinions if a cap of 2, 3 or 4 R01-level grants would be helpful for allowing more labs to secure funding. Frankly, seeing PIs with 4 R01s is very demoralizing when I am unable to get 1.

I know multiple examples of this happening that are not "malicious", per se....but PI has a major unpredicted financial hurdle ( internal funding restructuring, major equipment damage, grant terminations etc), or the project changed and the PI was easily able to justify co-I award change yr 3-5.

@chorye Agree, that can totally happen, and it's bad business. All one can do is try to work with decent folks who respect collaborative contracts, and never again work with/support the ones who don't.

I encourage everyone who is deeply concerned about this proposal to submit a public comment by Aug 3, here: rfi.grants.nih.gov/?s=6a1f200c6e0…

@BarakRotblat @TravisEGibson @anshulkundaje x.com/TravisEGibson/…

@TravisEGibson @anshulkundaje @chorye yeh if you need to pay yourself as well that's hard

@NR_Tucker Sure, but a PI can simply choose to not distribute funds to co-Is if they are in a financial pinch. Hopefully people don't have crappy co-Is, but this happens a lot more than you would expect when project directions or funding situations change and most often to ESIs.

@chorye I can't agree with that. PI/MPI is not all that counts for salary coverage. If you have two R01's as PI/MPI at ~30% each, the remaining 40% effort can be off Co-I's/other grant mechanisms. There's no co-I effort or award number limit. Money spends the same.

@PracheeAC @anshulkundaje Or any exploratory R03/R21. Who would ever apply for a core grant now? Just did a quick RePORTER search of one highly prolific/respected/role model-type professor type who's started 5+ companies. At the height of their career (just post tenure), she had 9 NIH grants, now avg 4-5.

It is not insane IMO and can be about a lot of other things. You’ll remember that a decade ago the NIH proposed something similar, the grant support index, that was meant to also achieve the same: broader distribution of research dollars and higher funding rates instead of a Matthew effect of more grants to fewer investigators with diminishing returns. Many young PIs were in support. Back then, I submitted a letter in support of it on behalf of many signatories newpislack.wordpress.com/open-letter-on… The NIH-wide initiative had its roots in related capping policies that resulted in significantly increased funding rates at NIGMS relative to other ICs. The few and powerful at rich institutions (massive outliers in the grant recipient distribution) killed the initiative before it could even be thoroughly discussed. Back when the GSI was proposed, ~6% of NIH funded researchers had the support equivalent to 3 R01s. If going by RPGs not total dollars, I’d expect that to be an even smaller percentage of affected researchers now given the proliferation of R35 as a mechanism that consolidates multiple projects into a single award. IMO, the over-proliferation of completely unsustainable soft money positions is not a slam dunk justification to act as a sink for public research dollars distributed by an agency beholden to more than those researchers and institutions. This is not really my fight anymore, other than a vested interest in thriving federal funding for scientific research, responsibly deployed to support new ideas and institutions not just concentrate them … but I do think seeing this as entirely about a hostile administration threatens to dismiss a serious policy proposal that should be thoroughly considered on its merits