In the beginning of 2025, Nancy G.-M. ’26 was on the lookout for summer science research opportunities.
She applied to various programs and sent some cold emails to labs and professors. Soon, she received several disappointing replies explaining that recent cuts to research funding were forcing labs to cut back. Some labs could not even afford to take on undergraduate researchers—certainly not high schoolers.
Although she still managed to land summer lab work at Stanford University, the situation has remained with Nancy, especially as cuts to scientific research continue.
“It’s already super tricky for high schoolers to get access to research or lab experience,,” Nancy said. “[But the] overall downscaling of research is a larger issue. What will research in the US look like in the next five, ten years if this [continues]?”
It’s a question that has circulated through the American scientific community over the past few months as the Trump administration has sought to freeze or cancel federal funding allocated towards scientific research at universities. The effects have gone beyond labs; institutions like Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania have laid off hundreds of staff, paused hiring, and preemptively decreased the number of graduate students they will accept in the next year.
In addition, recent research cuts have disproportionately targeted LGBTQ+ health and other topics tied to supposedly “DEI” efforts—such as gender dysphoria, HIV, and vaccines. Staff at agencies like the NIH and NSF have reportedly been directed to deprioritize such research, under the justification of “agency priorities.”
For biology teacher Lindy Jensen, the long history of American public research funding informs her perspective on the funding cuts. Having worked in research since 2013, she recognizes the importance and history of biomedical research funding.
“In the 20th century, the explosion of biomedical funding in the US helped millions of people with modern synthesis [techniques], sequencing of the human genome, etc. We’re the biggest spender in the world, and a crazy outlier, really,” Jensen said.
However, in the 2010s, Jensen began to notice a decrease in NIH funding. While budget numbers stayed about the same on paper, they didn’t account for inflation.
“The writing’s been on the wall, so to speak, for biomedical researchers,” Jensen said.
As such, Jensen was unsurprised when funding cuts began to hit the news in January. Still, she emphasized the clear distinction between the slow weaning of funding of the 2010s and the recent budget cuts that the NIH and NSF have suffered, alongside massive staff layoffs.
“There’s a difference between cutting funding and cutting the function [of these institutions],” Jensen said.
Other government science agencies and labs like the NOAA, EPA, and the USDA have suffered similar layoffs and budget cuts, particularly in programs focused on climate change and environmental research.
At first, the government agency changes seemed distant to Justin C.-B. ’26, co-leader of the Environmental Club. Then a few weeks ago, in the process of researching the 1960s environmentalism movement, an official government internet archive disappeared right before his eyes. The moment crystallized how politics currently influence research and can hinder environmental progress. In the context of the Trump’s administration’s stance on climate change, environmental politics has gained a new relevance for him.
“The climate crisis is fundamentally a democracy crisis,” Justin said. “Right now with the Trump administration, we’re seeing a constitutional crisis. It’s all connected, isn’t it?”
Chemistry teacher Jeremy Jacquot similarly emphasized the link between politics and science. He defined federal funding as a major touchpoint.
“[With funding], we’re demonstrating that we, not as individuals but as a country, value [this research] right now and want to push for these breakthroughs. That is kind of a political decision,” Jacquot said. “And of course, different administrations, with different priorities, sets of beliefs, and constituencies, will value [each] area of research in different ways.”
Jacquot has still been taken aback by the extensive cuts to so many different areas of research. While he expected sustainability research would be targeted, he didn’t expect that biomedical research funding would be subject to the same scrutiny.
That assumption aligns with the historical trends of biomedical research funding. However, these recent funding changes have disrupted the field so substantially that research opportunities will be affected not only now, but also years into the future, as emphasized by a Stanford biomedical researcher who has begun to experience these cuts. The researcher was granted anonymity on the grounds that their lab could potentially be targeted and lose even more research grants if identified.
“[Most] research is not done on a four-year cycle, [or] based on when people are voted into office,” the researcher said. “But these decisions that happen in the course of six months to a year can have consequences on the volume of research, the quality, and the training [of] a future workforce in biomedical research, that will potentially persist for decades.”
Jehnna Ronan, the head of the science department, has similar concerns over how the developing scientific workforce will be impacted. Not only has cut funding affected current researchers, but it also shrunk the pool of potential future scientists and researchers with less graduate spots being offered at universities. With the recent exodus of senior scientists, there is less time and bandwidth to onboard and train new researchers.
“There’s going to be a generation of people who thought they wanted to be scientists, wanted to get into it, weren’t able to, and just had to take a completely different path, which is disappointing,” Ronan said.
Even for researchers who have their funding officially returned, they may continue to run into obstacles. Andy M. ’26 is especially concerned by these various bureaucratic aspects of science, having talked to biologists focusing on ecosystems during a school trip to Montana about their loss of research funding.
“The internal government organization responsible [for those logistics] has been gutted,” Andy said.
Jensen has already seen these issues play out with the trajectory of a friend, a postdoctoral scholar who submitted her request for continued funding as usual in November. But by the time January rolled around, the usual NIH panels were paused, and all requests were stalled. Though panels began to slightly pick up in April, Jensen’s friend will still have to discontinue her research soon.
“She’s prepared to be unemployed come June,” Jensen said.
Already, these fears have trickled down from higher education to high school. For Sydney E. ’25, the cuts also bear an extra personal baggage beyond her own ambitions.
At the beginning of the school year, Sydney lost a close family member to cancer. It was the end of a long battle with the disease. In that time, the family member participated in a research trial for a cancer medication that mitigated the disease’s health toll and likely extended their life.
But in the last couple months, cancer research funding has significantly decreased.
“It’s so hard to imagine that other people are not gonna be able to get the [chance for the] same treatment and resources. At least in my mind, that’s unacceptable,” Sydney said. “If we have a potential to help people and to save lives, cutting funding for that is just a slap in the face to anybody whose lives have been saved by research.”
Ronan echoed similar sentiments, noting the complex role that science has played in American history.
“Science is not always a force for good, but I do think we need science moving into the future to solve a lot of our problems,” Ronan said.