By Kristen DeAngelis
Professor of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts Amherst & Watertown High School Class of 1993
I joined the Watertown High School Biology Club for the same reason everyone else did: the week-long scuba diving field trip to Bonaire. Never mind that I couldn’t clear my ears at the bottom of the pool, failing my initial scuba test. I went anyway, with my snorkeling gear. We spent hours identifying fish in their coral reef habitats and swimming at pristine beaches. But I also got to see a scientist, my high school biology teacher, Mr. Buckley, in action: collecting specimens, leading discussions on how reef systems work, and giving research presentations to the locals in exchange for our club to get a sunset ride on their catamaran.
Today, as a research scientist and professor at UMass Amherst, I have a renewed appreciation for programs like our Biology Club and how critical they are to young people’s futures. Now there are federally funded training programs called research experiences for undergraduates (REUs), as well as local paid research internships for high school students like STEM@work in Massachusetts, and I have had the privilege of mentoring dozens of high school and undergraduate students because of these programs.
However, the research funding that helped to shape my career as a scientist, and those of our young people now, is being drained away. At first, the funding drain was a slow leak. For example, the NIH budget has not changed appreciably for the past two decades. However, this has meant steady cuts over time that add up due to inflation: a $100 research expense in the year 2000 costs about $186 today.
The current administration is aggressively and discriminately cutting research funding, and many of these cuts target training grants and fellowships that serve young people in marginalized communities. Federal funding for research was already at its lowest point in decades in 2024, and things are not going to get better if we do nothing. The White House official appropriations request for next year is to cut the NIH budget by 37 percent, the NSF budget by one half, and to cut all environmental research at NASA, including major planetary missions. This is an unprecedented cut in funding that could affect the U.S.’s global edge leadership in biotech and medical research for decades.
Maybe it seems like federal research funding doesn’t have a big impact on our Massachusetts youth, but large portions of federal grants go towards our local institutions. The top institutions here that get NSF and NIH funding include Mass General Hospital, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, MIT, Northeastern, Harvard University, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston University, and UMass. These are institutions that educate our kids, provide our medical care, and employ our families and friends. And federal research funding is the engine behind services from road safety to popular weight-loss drugs. Our Commonwealth is already a leader in biotech and medical research, so it’s no surprise that Massachusetts leads the nation in loss of NSF funding.
Research funding helps towns like Watertown across the country. Federal research funding helped guide the cleanup of the Charles River, which was unswimmable when I was a kid. Now, we celebrate the return of the herring to their spawning grounds in Watertown with the second annual Herring Festival. And this was not a vanity project: healthy watersheds prevent the spread of communicable diseases and divert stormwater to prevent flooding. The positive effects of research funding have also helped to make Watertown one of the fastest growing biotech hubs in the country.
Research has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support, so these cuts are unprecedented and do not reflect the will of most people in our communities. A national poll conducted by an independent firm found that three-quarters (74 percent) of voters “support the federal government using taxpayer funds to invest in scientific research, with strong bipartisan support.” Political divisions for research support are very new, and even in today’s Congress, there is agreement across the aisle for research funding.
To prevent further damage to our national research program and preserve the benefits to Watertown’s young people, I’m urging you to contact Reps. Katherine Clark, and Senators Warren and Markey. It’s not a waste of time if you think they already support research: your voice raises the priority of this issue, and shows that federal research funding matters to people.
My parents were born and raised in Watertown, and worked hard to stay in Watertown so we could have the same great opportunities through Watertown High School that they did. Today, I get to work with young people and help them articulate and realize their dreams just like my teachers did for me. By telling congress to preserve and support research funding, you’ll help our town and our youth create a healthier, more resilient future for us all.
Thank you Professor DeAngelis!! I am a strong believer in coroprate R&D and public sector R&D. As a big innovative factor, R&D is crucial to our national and regional ecomomic enegines. 50 years of cuts in both sectors, has led to very few new technologies, repurposing old technology without any producing any true net postivie and overall decline. Most have identified the smartphone as last big leap, and everyone knows that pharma just changes the color of the pill and gets a trademark extention – I’m being factitious here but not by much. It’s all so derivative!
I know R&D costs. In the era of Jack Welch cut everything to the bone to extract as much rent as possible, very few corporations are going to invest in such a department. In the public sector, however, the end goals are different. Govermnet is not Business and Business is not Goverment. Divison of labor is even needed among sectors. ARPANET is a prime example of what goverment can do as was the Polio Vaccine. WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS – you can thank Hedy Lamar who worked with the US Navy during the war effort.
One key aspect that people overlook is how charity often doesn’t move the needle for crucial missions. With so much overhead and decentralization, charities often end up being a performative vehicle or, at worst, a way to evade taxes. I only give to charities in which money goes to indivials on ground like Catholic Relief Serivces for Haiti. It is better for our nation to have monies pooled via taxes so that it goes directly to the lab researcher monitoring the experiment 24/7 or to the government program with a mission to cure cancer.
This will also make wages rise, which started to slow down in 1971; just when the government started to cut funds to college and universitiies. Every since, people have been trying to make up for the loss – being dual income and heavily leveraged via credit cards, bad investments and mortgages. People need to realize that you cannot recreate the 1950s and 1960s without having the same income tax system on the public sector side. In the private sector, we need to go back to the mentality in which corporations were indebted to the shareholder as well as to the stakeholders, aka we the people. Corporations can make as much useless widgets as they want, but a lot of us aint buying.