Today's basic science is tomorrow's game-changing invention. Trump's cuts threaten both.

Boston Globe

10 hours ago

In fact, 30 years is often how long science takes to mature from a cool discovery to something that's life-changing, says the MIT professor. But he worries those discoveries are about to come to a screeching halt.
'If the administration and Congress follow through with what they said they were going to do,' says Bawendi, 'it's going to be the destruction of the scientific enterprise in this country. And that's really scary. Not for science, but for the economy. For national security. And the leadership of the US in the world.'
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Within the next few months, Congress will vote on whether to approve the White House's proposed
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Still, President Trump can only hold office for three-and-a-half more years. Can't science pick right back up in 2029?
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Don't bet on it, Bawendi told me. 'Compare this to COVID,' he says. 'We were locked out [of my lab] for six months in COVID... It took me two years to go back to where I was.'
During those six months, equipment broke or degraded. Older students graduated without spending time with younger students, who needed to learn from them. 'So,' he says, 'it's not something you can just shut off and then turn it back on.'
The administration's attacks on immigration and immigrants aren't helping, either. Bawendi says that about half of his PhD students are from other countries. 'They're ambitious, incredibly smart, and they work with native-born students.'
Moungi Bawendi's once-obscure chemistry is in flatscreen TVs, where it enhances the quality of the display. The discovery won the MIT professor the Nobel Prize in 2023.
Craig F. Walker
One of the enormous strengths of American science is its ability to attract the best minds from around the world to help solve hard problems, Bawendi says. Foreign PhD students are key parts of the research labor force, taking on the repetitive tasks and data analysis that can lead to breakthroughs.
'Certainly my foreign students are all going to leave,' he says. 'Because they're scared. And they don't feel like there are any opportunities here.'
But if international students don't attend graduate school here, won't there be more space for aspiring PhD students from the US?
'The number of American students who want to do PhDs is not big,' says Bawendi. 'It's hard work. The pay is not great. Being a graduate student for five, six years at low wage? There are other things they could do that are much easier with better pay.'
Bawendi worries that it all adds up to 'a potential generation of young students that [will be] destroyed.' Elementary and high schools have seen
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And funding for doctoral and postdoctoral students is likely to be decimated: the administration
Government support remains critical to basic science – research aimed at understanding rather than commercializing. That makes it unlikely that corporations will step in to fill the gap created by research funding cuts.
And that's a problem. The beauty of basic research comes from serendipity – the 'aha' moments when the research path takes a surprising turn, or when applications emerge that had never been imagined. Thirty years ago, Bawendi says, he had no idea the work he was doing would enhance flatscreen TVs.
The cuts happening now 'freeze out the innovative discoveries' that will 'provide the tools of the future,' he argues.
If there's a kernel of good news here, it's not for the US, says Jeremy Berg, the former director of National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH. Other nations 'are just ecstatic,' he says.
And then there's China, which has plowed huge sums into challenging US leadership in science and technology, seeking to dominate the clean energy sector and rapidly shrink the US lead in artificial intelligence.
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Jeremy Berg, the former director of National Institute of General Medical Sciences at then NIH, says research funding cuts under the Trump administration are gifts to competitors, such as China, which is challenging the US for leadership in artificial intelligence and other technologies.
Andy Wong/Associated Press
'If you're China and you're interested in being the world leader in research or in biomedical research,' Berg says of the Trump administration's funding cuts, 'this is a gift beyond your wildest dreams.'
Berg believes that the repercussions for science — and for consumers — are coming more quickly than we might think. NIH-funded researchers frequently test new treatments through clinical trials, which are conducted in collaboration with academic medical centers, such as Children's Hospital and Mass General.
Hospitals, in turn, recruit patients and assign staff to organize trials. They may pay for extra MRIs or blood tests for the trials. But if researchers can't afford to pay hospitals, the system for validating science will fall apart.
Already, according to Berg, hospitals are hesitating to do business with NIH-funded researchers. Once, those grants were basically a sure thing. Now, collaborators aren't sure they'll get paid back. Berg knows of several academic medical centers refusing to work with researchers who have multi-year NIH grants, unless the researchers can produce new letters each year confirming that the money is still coming.
'Scientists used to trust NIH as being a good faith partner. Patients used to trust doctors who were doing NIH-funded research,' says Berg. 'Participants — when asked to participate in a clinical trial [by a doctor or scientist] — were confident that you weren't just going to say in the middle of the trial: 'Oops, nevermind.''
In addition to NIH grants being cancelled outright, Berg says that lots of other grants have been 'shadow terminated.' Even though the grant hasn't been canceled, the money has stopped flowing, leaving scientists without ways to pay the bills. Berg estimates that the Trump administration has withheld nearly $3 billion in approved grant money.
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Berg hopes that Congress will ultimately refuse to rubber stamp the Trump administration's proposed
An aerial view of Kendall Square. Basic science underpins the world's premier biotech cluster.
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Still, even if research funds escape the proposed cuts, that doesn't mean they're safe. It's unclear how much latitude the NIH and NSF have to terminate grants, but that hasn't stopped the Trump administration from withholding or canceling funding.
The effects of research cuts are unlikely to be felt immediately, says Myron Kassaraba, Vice President of Investment at MassVentures – a quasi-public venture capital agency. 'But,' he adds, 'it's certainly going to result in fewer inventions.'
Those inventions range from medicines to communications technology, says Kassaraba. And they give rise to lots of companies – as the biotech cluster in Kendall Square can attest. 'The impact here [in Massachusetts] is as significant as in any region in the US,' Kassaraba says.
Still Kassaraba believes the state can find a way through the lean times.
'The inventiveness and resourcefulness' that got Massachusetts to where it is, he says, will 'hopefully serve us well going forward. I think we'll find a way to keep the innovation engine running.'
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