Quick Take
The Trump administration’s attack on scientific research will deeply affect UC Santa Cruz, write three eminent UCSC professors, including one who won a Nobel Prize for her work. Since Donald Trump took office, UCSC has lost 10 NIH grants worth $6 million, they write. In the past two weeks, the professors have lost $2.8 million in funding for biomedical programs. “The termination of these highly effective and legally compliant programs, based on undefined claims of woke ideology and waste, will weaken the crucial talent pool in the biomedical workforce – a loss our society can ill afford,” they write.
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The Trump administration’s aggressive dismantling of research and education, initiated in January, is inflicting increasing damage on UC Santa Cruz. Despite ongoing legal challenges to some of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, our campus has suffered a devastating blow. We represent three of the almost 1,000 faculty members at UCSC. We are professors in the department of molecular, cell and developmental biology and our research groups focus on fundamental aspects of human biology: how cells divide, age and fight infections. Since our research is predominantly funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we wish to address the recent impacts of the Trump administration’s actions on our trainees and research progress.
Over the past four months, UCSC has experienced the termination of 10 NIH-funded grants, resulting in a total loss of $6 million for research endeavors. Alarmingly, in just the past two weeks, five crucial biomedical training programs have been discontinued, representing an annual funding reduction of $2.8 million. The training grants abruptly terminated include the Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD), Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC), Research Mentoring Internship Program (RMI), Post-baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) and Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA).
Some of these grants, such as the IMSD training grant, have been a cornerstone of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) training at UCSC for over half a century, training hundreds of students who have excelled in their graduate schools, medical schools and other health professions; many of those trained are now serving California communities. These programs directly support our undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral scholars, providing critical hands-on research that launches scientific careers. Most importantly, they broaden the lens of our research by bringing diverse voices to our research programs, which makes us stronger and more innovative.
The termination of these highly effective and legally compliant programs, based on undefined claims of woke ideology and waste, will weaken the crucial talent pool in the biomedical workforce – a loss our society can ill afford.
In the aftermath of World War II, the federal government recognized the power of university-based research and made a deliberate decision to accelerate scientific progress by supporting institutions across the country, a far more efficient approach than creating costly standalone government facilities. This longstanding collaboration, primarily through the NIH, involved a shared financial responsibility between the government and universities and has had overwhelming bipartisan support for over 70 years.
The recent abrupt and arbitrary termination of NIH funding by the Trump administration dismantles this successful model. Last week, in addition to grant terminations, the administration proposed a 40% cut to the entire NIH budget, posing a catastrophic economic threat to Santa Cruz, to California and to the United States. UCSC’s NIH-supported workforce is approximately 2,200 people, each of whom relies on varying percentages of NIH funding for their work. For comparison, Dominican Hospital employs about 1,700 people in full-time positions.
Our community is uniquely vulnerable to these cuts.
Through active research, training and education, the University of California’s mission prioritizes undergraduate, graduate and professional education and provides long-term societal benefits to Californians. Our research programs, supported by federal investment, are a vital public good that fuels the state’s economic growth, technological innovation and public health and safety. We are seeing huge losses in this economic and social engine, and it’s possible we won’t appreciate the significance of this until it’s irretrievably lost.
Please support our efforts and contact your local federal and state representatives to stand with UCSC for the continued support of scientific research, education, health and our economy.
Needhi Bhalla is a cell biology professor who leads an NIH-funded lab that studies how chromosomes are partitioned when cells divide. Her work contributes to our understanding of cancer, infertility, miscarriages and disabilities.
Susan Carpenter is the Robert L. Sinsheimer chair of molecular biology at UCSC. She is an immunologist, and her research group works to understand the role that RNA plays in regulating immune responses to infection
Carol Greider is a distinguished professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology at UCSC and the 2009 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Her lab studies fundamental mechanisms that regulate telomere length and how it impacts age-related degenerative disease and cancer.