Months of hard work went to waste when Ellie Pagan, senior, had her research internship at Washington University (WashU) cut short.
Pagan, along with two professors at WashU’s new neuroscience department, was studying autism disorders and certain brain wavelengths that affect cognition.
Pagan’s internship was heavily funded through a federal grant, which was cut while she was researching, forcing her internship to be cut short.
“It was a super exciting study, and I was really frustrated when I was unable to research,” Pagan said.
According to Columbia Law School, as of June, the Trump administration has cut billions in research funding, including more than $1.5 billion from grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and $8.7 billion from grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
However, Pagan holds hope for the future of research funding.
“I think that once we get someone in our office [presidential administration] with more support of funding, our grants will come back, so I am not too discouraged about it,” Pagan said.
Dr. Cathy Farrar, science teacher, worries about how funding cuts will impact her students.
Dr. Farrar said some MHS students participate in internships through local universities, and funding cuts will make universities less likely to accept high school students, making them less exposed to fields that they want to pursue.
“I had a student a couple of years ago who was only able to sequence a genome because WashU and University of Wisconsin-Madison were willing to absorb the cost, and neither of the universities would be able to do that if it weren’t for the NIH and NSF grants,” Dr. Farrar said.
Additionally, students who have a greater economic disadvantage might be less likely to pursue research because funding cuts also deplete scholarship money that universities can provide, Dr. Farrar said.
“Community outreach programs, like the MySci Resource Center, changed the way elementary students approached and learned science,” Dr. Farrar said. “Cutting funds in these important areas is a bad idea.”
For Ayush Vaisreddy, junior, scientific research allows him to explore his passions and be creative.
This past summer, Vaisreddy interned at a chemistry lab at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL). Vaisreddy assisted his lab mentor with organizing data, maintaining lab equipment and preparing lab samples.
Toward the end of his internship, Vaisreddy’s chemistry research was delayed because of the cuts in federal research grants.
“I was not able to fund a project that my mentor and I wanted to do because we didn’t have the grant money,” Vaisreddy said.
Vaisreddy said research is important because it exposes high school and undergraduate students to the field of scientific research at an early age.
“I know places like WashU and other universities are able to provide paid internships or credit hours to students for the research, so if there is a lack of funds needed to fund these internships or conduct research, it becomes difficult to earn and conduct research,” Vaisreddy said.
