On July 31 and August 1, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers received the devastating news that over 800 federal research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy, totaling close to 600 million dollars, were immediately suspended. As I am writing this, nearly a month later, while some NSF grants were reinstated following a class-action lawsuit, most grants remain frozen, the research put on ice.
The impact of these funding cuts on research is broad and tremendous; these grants supported critical research and training related to the treatment of pediatric diseases, neurodegeneration, cancer, communicable diseases, into the use of AI in health, and many more important topics. Our hearts sank when we found our names in the long list of suspended awards. For our lab, these included two research grants (R01s) to study the mechanisms by which arsenic exerts its toxicity, a postdoctoral fellowship to understand the impact of alcohol on behavior across generations, and the grant that funds the program that supports another postdoctoral fellow who specializes in the study of reproduction. These grants supported totally or partially all the members of my laboratory, currently a total of nine people, as well as their research.
Following the suspension of UCLA federal grants, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that UCLA was found to have “violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students.” As mentioned by the UCLA leadership during a town hall, a letter sent by the DOJ, that has yet to be shared with the UCLA faculty, also contains complaints related to inequitable hiring practices and trans athletes competing in sports. Ironically, these grants support or have supported people truly from all backgrounds. As one UCLA trainee put it, “It should not be necessary to discuss my religion, but I am one of many Jewish students and faculty at UCLA being negatively impacted by this funding freeze that is allegedly aiming to address antisemitism at UCLA”. This statement is representative of a growing sentiment within the UCLA Jewish community.
This is perhaps where these suspensions are the most devastating, in the way that they directly impact the lives of all trainees. Getting to know their lives and aspirations requires truly understanding how deeply committed these trainees are to their work and how destructive the actions of this administration have been at a personal level. These voices need to be heard, so I recently reached out to trainees and research staff from various programs at UCLA and asked if they would like to anonymously share their experience and perspectives on these cuts. Here are some excerpts:
“I was born into a low-income, military family; neither of my parents went to college but they instilled the value of education in both me and my brother, a value that I continue to hold as I work towards becoming a professor. My passion for neuroscience research started in high school following a traumatic brain injury during a football practice that temporarily paralyzed half of my body for over six hours. It was obviously a scary experience, but it also led to my fascination with how the brain works. I continue to be fascinated as I research how drugs and environmental chemicals can impact multigenerational brain health, a supposed priority for this administration despite the freeze to my funding.”
“I was raised in Midland, Texas, and grew up in a community that is entrenched in the oil and gas industry. I learned from an early age how your environment can impact your health, and how politics plays a role in how people view issues like climate change and natural disasters. I spent years trying to figure out a career that combined my love of community and my love of the environment, and finally figured out that studying toxicology would let me combine my interests and work towards solving issues that affect millions of people worldwide. It’s devastating to be impacted by these cuts so early in my PhD, and the uncertainty of funding makes me worried that I won’t be able to build a career in the field that I’ve grown to love.”
“I was born in California into a low-income, first-generation family where education was the key to breaking cycles of financial instability. My passion for medicine began during my internship at St. Francis Medical Center, where I discovered a deep calling to create treatments that could impact more than one patient at a time. This led me to pursue a career as an academic research professor, with aspirations to advance science for the greater good. Currently, I study arsenic-induced epigenetic mechanisms driving hepatocellular carcinoma, work that has given me both purpose and direction. Completing my undergraduate and graduate education at the University of California has been life-changing, turning a dream into reality.”
“I grew up in a small rural village in China, with strong support from my parents for my education. I earned my PhD at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since childhood, I have aspired to be a scientist and have now worked in research for about 15 years, including six years at UCLA. My goal is to contribute to human scientific progress through my work.”
“I grew up in a low-income household in Bakersfield, California, which is one of the least educated cities in America. Despite that, I knew that I wanted to pursue a PhD in genetics since I was 14 years old. I also became a very young dad at 19 years old when I was an undergrad. Though, that didn’t stop me from pursuing an advanced degree and only encouraged me to persevere. I have since become the first and so far the only person in my family to obtain a PhD, and my daughter, who is now 10 years old, has even said that she wants a PhD. I strongly believe my contribution to society is to educate and inspire the next generation of scientists through teaching. My career goal is to become a teaching professor at a research university to contribute to the academic excellence that makes the universities in the United States some of the most prestigious in the world. I specifically chose to continue my postdoctoral training at UCLA because it offers a teaching fellowship program that is instrumental in helping me prepare for a career in teaching, and I sincerely hope I am still able to carry out this opportunity.”
"Having grown up in Los Angeles, it had been my dream to attend UCLA. I had always thought that I would have a career in business, until an environmental science class I took in high school inspired me to pursue a career in environmental health. As I begin moving towards finishing my PhD, I am saddened by the funding freezes forcing me and my lab mates to pause and restrict our research."
How will we be able to weather this dark period for US research and keep these talented individuals in science? It will depend on how long these cuts last. In some ways, we have been through this before, pausing our work during the pandemic and only a few months ago, albeit briefly, during the LA wildfires. Yet, this feels different—more targeted, deeper, hugely devastating and crushingly demoralizing. The attacks on science and research are multi-pronged and incessant, whether they are directly targeting universities, or aimed at university endowments or indirect funds received from grants. Yet it is difficult to understand why something as essential as health research has stopped receiving bipartisan support. While the California Governor and the US President are embroiled in social media banter, UCLA’s research remains on pause, losing staff and trainees who were going to be the workforce of the US academia and biotech industry. This is a loss for all.
