When she’s not pipetting, she’s listening to music, supporting the Birds, or laughing way too loud with friends.

The beautiful cover illustration for this piece is by Holy Diode! Check out more of their work at www.holydiode.com

Charity Robbins is a student in the Class of 2027 at UPenn studying Biochemistry and Hispanic studies, with a soft spot for chemistry, a big love for science communication, and a mission to make research spaces more welcoming.

So far most of our articles have been authored by PhD students and post-docs in the health sciences. We welcome submissions from anyone in a science-related field at any career stage, and we take a broad view of what it means to be a scientist.

We hope that you’ll share with your own neighbors why funding science is patriotic, and we hope you feel proud, too. Because those scientific breakthroughs? They’re made in the U.S.A. — all thanks to you.

neighborhoodscientist.org/posts/2025/j...

Over the next week, we’ll highlight the incredible scientists that do this government-funded research and the citizens who benefit and support it, from high school teachers to those obtaining medical treatment through NIH-funded clinical trials.

If you’re an American taxpayer, your tax dollars currently go towards the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is the world’s largest funder of biomedical research. As your neighborhood scientists, we’re proud to be entrusted with those dollars to generate the science behind tomorrow’s cures.

We asked scientists why they are proud to do taxpayer-funded scientific research in the US. In their answers, we hope that you, too, can feel some American pride in science this July 4th.

neighborhoodscientist.org/posts/2025/j...