Cat Hicks
Going to put this out there in light of news of other researchers moving, because I think information sharing in our communities is a form of power, but Ashley and I are looking at opportunities outside of the US right now and considering it. I want to signal our openness to it.
Especially for her, as a tenured teaching professor in neurobiology whose entire lab & teaching practice is deeply grounded in equity & increasing success in STEM. Her extraordinary work makes local communities flourish
Cat Hicks
There's not really a playbook for putting this kind of conversation on social media so I appreciate your kindness! Just sharing, we have no entitlement about this, we understand the deep difficulty. I have family across four countries. I have a half Canadian family and for many years we have considered moving in that direction; we're really broadly open though with an obvious need for LGBTQ+ safety and a desire for us both to live in a place where our work can go as far as we can make it go.
Cat Hicks
Ashley's work is transformative. At UCSD she's created, from scratch, a milestone neurobiology lab that gives critical lab skills that unlock a plethora of STEM careers. She's led the STARTneuro program which funded & graduated something like 40+ students all still working in science; she's created neural data science & discipline-based programming courses she now teaches other teachers to lead. She's rocketed through tenure with acceleration at every step. She is truly a unicorn in STEM
Cat Hicks
I can't put into words how it feels to see my wife's extraordinary work increasing diversity in STEM be targeted so explicitly and punitively by the most powerful forces in our country; at the same time I can see the chilling that is happening for social scientists like me who study topics that directly engage with psychological wellbeing and adversity. This is the work we both love and we are not going to give it up. We are both committed to that work benefiting our community
Cat Hicks
Also just appreciate the support from my community here. Every day we have been feeling the threat and loss (many things I can't post publicly about given the need to prioritize so many people's safety right now and all our scientist community's very real fears of being made a target). Just knowing that people still see and support both of our work is really helpful to maintaining the hope as funding and institutions seem to vanish
Cat Hicks
More on Ashley's work here: https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
Aral Balkan
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