The University of California, Berkeley's Michael Eisen announced on Twitter that he is running for the US Senate in 2018, Nature News reports.
He says that he was moved to run because of the new administration's view on science. "Not toward science in the narrow sense — I don't think people are worried about whether the [National Institutes of Health] budget will go up or down by 2 percent — but the basic rejection of the fundamental principles upon which science is based," Eisen tells Nature News.
Eisen adds that he's never seriously thought about running for office before, but came to the conclusion that he had to do something more than "spouting on Twitter." As Nature News notes, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) has indicated that she may not run for re-election in 2018, and California has an open primary in which the two candidates who receive the most votes move on to the general election, paving a possible path for Eisen. He tells ScienceInsider that he'll likely run as an independent. "If you've learned anything from this election, it's that we're in a time where political outsiders are actually having some success," he adds at Nature News.
At ScienceInsider, Eisen notes that he ran for student council in high school and for a spot on the Genetics Society of America board, but lost both times.