Testimonials

Thomas Rossetti
Postdoctoral Researcher
UMass Chan Medical School

My name is Tom Rossetti, and I am a Postdoctoral Associate at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester. Our lab is dedicated to discovering new medicines, with a particular focus on inflammatory diseases and autoimmune conditions such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis. These illnesses are not only common, but their worldwide prevalence is increasing, and they can deeply impact and hinder the daily lives of those affected. 

Academic research plays a critical role in drug discovery. We often investigate novel medicines that receive little attention from the BioPharma industry, largely because early-stage validation is seen as too risky or expensive. Thus, the work we do is foundational; we lay important groundwork that paves the way for the development of innovative new medicines that can improve and save people’s lives.

Unfortunately, recent funding cuts have forced us to let go of talented scientists and to significantly scale back our projects. In my field of research, drug discovery, a disruption like this doesn’t just delay progress; it can add multiple years to the already decade-long journey required to bring a new medicine from the mind of a scientist to a patient’s bedside. Even more concerning, some promising projects have been abandoned entirely. Without the support to pursue these ideas, we risk missing out on new classes of medicines that could transform the lives of patients across the U.S. and around the world.

So, overall investment in research like my own, which occurs in multiple labs all around Massachusetts, through the DRIVE Act is truly an investment in future cures. With restored funding, we could resume the critical projects we have had to set aside or slow down and continue making progress toward the development of new medicines for patients in our community and beyond.

Karthika Nagalekshmi
Postdoctoral Researcher
UMass Chan Medical School

Since the federal funding for Science was disrupted in 2025 by the Trump Administration, UMass Chan, like many other institutes across the country, has faced tremendous challenges. Work on important life saving treatments has stalled, many projects and, in some cases, entire labs have shut down. We have experienced mass layoffs and scientists like me who moved to this country to do cutting edge research have been scrambling to keep both their jobs and their immigration status. As postdocs faced layoffs, an entire cohort of about 100 prospective graduate students had their offers rescinded. A major loss of a new generation of scientists. 

I work in a lab focused on infectious diseases, where I study HIV infection and the cellular responses to it. HIV is responsible for over 40 million deaths worldwide, but today, thanks to scientific advancements, it is a manageable illness with the right access to treatment. And as you all know the funding cuts to USAID have caused major setbacks to this. The uncertainty of funding and the anti science rhetoric from the federal government has had a major impact on the functioning of labs like ours. This is why the swift passing of the DRIVE ACT is more essential now than ever. Stable funding at the state level would first and foremost decrease our dependency on the federal government for basic research funding and give us scientific freedom to pursue projects that matter. This would allow MA to attract and retain talent. The research enterprise across Massachusetts not only produces life-changing innovations but also undergirds the state’s economy and tax base. For every dollar invested, the state receives an economic benefit of double that amount. The DRIVE Act will lead to job creation at universities, continued advancements spanning academia and industry, as well as the recruitment, retention and development of early-career scientists. 

States like Texas, New York and California, which are considering major new investments in research, are great examples of how supporting science helps maintain a state’s competitiveness. Today we are asking Massachusetts to join them and support basic research in our state, so that we can continue to make discoveries and advancements here.  

Stephen Larson
Graduate Student
Worcester Polytechnic Institute

My name is Stephen Larson. I am a 4th year Biomedical Engineering PhD candidate at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, one of the Co-Chairs for WPI-GWU , and the recording secretary for Local 2322. I am here to offer testimony in support of the DRIVE Initiative to fund public institutions.

Last year was a tough time for many of us in academia in both public and private institutions due to the federal attacks on research. Grants were being cancelled, research funding was delayed, and the various federal government shutdowns has made funding unstable, making those of us who rely on the funds ask how research will proceed, which projects and questions are worth asking, and who will be hired to answer these questions.

Delays in funding have had a real impact on graduate workers and undergraduate students, due to funding uncertainty and delays in funding. My roommate, also a 4th year PhD candidate, has had to find other work outside of his lab and stall his thesis so he can be paid for the remaining time as a graduate worker. His work would help soldiers in the field recover from blast induced TBI. In the Math and Physics department, students working to find solutions in fusion power had their grants cancelled, stalling their degree progress until it was eventually restored. Undergraduates, sometimes multi-publication authors, and some of the brightest students I know, were denied admission to graduate programs across the board from both the most prestigious and even their “safe” picks, due to the lack of faith in their dream lab’s ability to fund them for their PhD. One friend and faculty member of mine in Chemistry even moved back overseas to Switzerland to continue his career, and two more PhD students have since graduated and moved to Germany to escape the funding uncertainty in the US.

We are facing a time where the federal government is punishing students and workers investing in themselves, their education, and for asking questions that have real social and economic impacts. There is a famous report released in 2024 before this madness stating that for every dollar invested in the NIH, $2.54 is generated. Massachusetts is known for its intellectual prowess, these attacks on education and academia from the Federal government is an attack that will have lasting negative impacts for Massachusetts and its economy. Investing in public research through the DRIVE Initiative not only lessens the blow, but ensures our economic viability in the long term; it keeps our brightest minds here, drives innovation, and propels us forward. Therefore, I urge you to strongly support Governor Healey’s DRIVE Initiative and invest in public research.

Samuel Hildebrand
Graduate Student
UMass Chan Medical School

My name is Sam Hildebrand, I’m a PhD student in Anastasia Khvorova’s lab at UMass Chan Medical School. In Anastasia’s lab we study nucleic acid therapeutics, specifically small RNA therapeutics, with a focus on translational research and drug discovery. The main goals are development of novel chemistry for these molecules as therapeutics which can be licensed to biotechnology companies or developed within academia. My work focuses on developing therapeutics for rare diseases, which is work that depends on public funding as private companies do not see the work as profitable enough to invest in.

So far the technology developed in the lab has been used to start two companies and has been licensed to many more with multiple compounds in clinical development. One of my colleagues, another graduate student, who worked to develop a compound for a devastating rare disease where muscle turns to bone upon injury due to a genetic mutation submitted a graduate fellowship application, received the best score possible for his application, and still has not gotten a notice of funding more than a year since he received his score. This can have serious consequences on the career development of graduate students. Another colleague of mine invented a new chemical modification with profound positive effects on the efficacy of the drugs we develop and was able to get a tenure track position at UMass Chan Medical School in large part because of this work. Since the funding cuts to the NIH and UMass came at a time in his career when institutional and federal funding support is essential to be able to get his own lab started and research program underway, his progress has been substantially affected and he’s not sure if he will be able to make it through this period of funding instability.

Funding cuts do not just affect those already struggling, they can completely derail the career of promising young scientists who rely on support from their institution and the federal government for survival. The DRIVE Act would allow Massachusetts institutions to retain these talented young scientists and support researchers through the difficult times when the NIH is being politicized and no longer allocating funding at the usual rate. Without urgent state-level funding many rising stars will be forced to either leave Massachusetts or leave science altogether.

Isaac Pliskin
Graduate Student
UMass Amherst

I am in my fifth year as a PhD candidate in mathematical physics at UMass Amherst, where I work on developing tools to better understand fundamental physics questions. I also serve as one of the Co-Chairs of the Graduate Employee Organization at UMass Amherst, where I help to represent around 2,700 graduate student workers. 

Thankfully my research funding hasn’t been affected by funding cuts (since there isn’t much funding for my subfield, although maybe things such as DRIVE could change that!) but through my role as GEO Co-Chair I have experienced the impact of federal funding cuts throughout the UMass Amherst campus. Given my role of interacting with graduate student workers across the entire campus I am able to see the impact of federal funding cuts in various fields of research. Researchers at UMass Amherst work on a variety of important issues, and federal funding cuts put this important work at risk. This risk goes beyond cancelling projects. The federal funding cuts are being implemented alongside increasing oversight (really overreach) of funding priorities by the federal government. I have talked to countless graduate students whose groups have had to reword their grant applications (often in silly ways! The statistics department is currently in shambles over the banning of the word “bias” in grant applications) or shift the focus of a project because they were concerned about if the federal government would reject their proposals. Initiatives such as DRIVE would help lessen the federal control over research priorities, especially when federal priorities may not be aligned with Massachusetts priorities.

Massachusetts is one of, if not the, leaders of research in the United States, but federal funding cuts are putting that at risk. I think it is appropriate to say that Massachusetts is proud of our position as a leader of research. DRIVE is a chance for us to not only continue to hold this position but show that we are committed to remaining as a leader in research. According to the Donahue Institute, Massachusetts is home to 10% of the research population in the United States while making up only 2% of the population as a whole. Research is a fundamental part of our identity as a commonwealth! We are known for our role in leading research, not just in the US, but globally. That being said, I think it is fair to say that Massachusetts is known for its private research institutions. That doesn’t need to be the case! Researchers should be coming to Massachusetts to do research not just at the private institutions, but at our public institutions as well. DRIVE would and should be the start of investing in our public research institutions.

I’d like to end by mentioning that talented undergrads are leaving the state for graduate school and other post grad research opportunities. We are bleeding our bright young talent at an alarming rate due to uncertainty around funding. I recently talked to a group of undergraduate physics majors who were considering putting off graduate school for a year or two just so they can remain in Massachusetts and potentially attend a school within Massachusetts once funding opportunities are more clear, but they won’t stick around forever! Given the urgency of this situation, your strong support for research funding through initiatives such as DRIVE is needed now, not months or years in the future when it is too late to fix the harm caused by federal funding uncertainty.

Kylie Paul
Graduate Student
UMass Amherst

I’m a PhD Candidate in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Program at UMass Amherst. In my lab we study proteins, or the functional units of genes, and how they’re made and broken down. My project specifically investigates how protein disposal is regulated by sugars in breast and ovarian cancer, as well as in autoimmune diseases. To do this research, I grow human cells in culture and analyze their protein expression under different conditions using a technique called mass spectrometry.

The goal of my research is to understand how proteins are regulated differently in these diseases in order to identify a druggable target to slow the survival of these cancerous and diseased cells. In short, I do fundamental basic science research that drug development pipelines depend on.

Funding cuts have made scientists, especially those who do this kind of fundamental research, afraid to take risks. Afraid to take on new students and to invest in the high-quality experiments that accelerate discovery. For example, in my work I rely heavily on mass spectrometry. This technique requires expensive instrumentation but it’s also unmatched for parsing out the cellular details in my disease models. Because of funding cuts, I’ve had to reduce how often I run those experiments to make every single run count. What that means in practice is more stress, more guesswork, and more missed steps. Instead of running intermittent experiments to optimize my samples along the way, I’m now spending far more time manually preparing samples and essentially guessing between runs how to improve my process. Furthermore, our program could and should be training more students to do this important research. Instead, we’re reducing admissions because of funding uncertainty. Every student we don’t train is a scientist who won’t be making discoveries in my field and many other important fields, delaying our progress in identifying treatments for life threatening diseases.

The DRIVE Act would provide the fuel that keeps research running. State investment in research funding would give scientists like me the stability to take risks, run the experiments that matter, and pursue the questions that don’t have easy answers. It would allow our program to grow and train the next generation of researchers that will contribute invaluable knowledge to basic science and develop treatments and technologies that Massachusetts and the rest of the country depend on. Basic science is a long game that requires sustained, reliable investment. The DRIVE Act is that investment and I urge you to support it.

Anonymous
Postdoctoral Associate
UMass Chan Medical School

I would like to share my experience as a postdoctoral researcher at UMass Chan Medical School and highlight how unstable research funding directly affects scientists, trainees, the continuity of research programs, and the broader research ecosystem in Massachusetts.

Our lab has been supported by two collaborative grants, and recently one of those grants was not renewed. Because this was a collaborative grant, the impact extends far beyond a single lab. Multiple labs across our department depended on this funding to support research projects, personnel, and ongoing collaborations. When funding is lost, the consequences ripple across many teams and can disrupt years of scientific progress.

As a result, our lab is now facing downsizing. Our principal investigator is working very hard to avoid layoffs, and one possible solution has been reducing staff to part-time positions.

We are currently two postdoctoral researchers in the lab. My colleague is on a J-1 visa and, because of federal visa requirements, cannot legally move to part-time employment. This creates a very difficult situation. Either he would need to be laid off — at a time when the academic job market is extremely challenging — potentially forcing him to leave the United States and return to his home country, or I would need to reduce my own position to below 50% effort in order to make up for the funding gap and allow him to remain employed full time.

If my position is reduced below 50%, I would lose essential employee benefits, including health insurance.”

These are the kinds of impossible choices researchers are being forced to make because of unstable funding. And beyond the financial impact, this uncertainty also affects the research itself. Instead of focusing entirely on experiments, publications, mentoring students, and advancing scientific discoveries, researchers are spending their time worrying about whether they will still have healthcare coverage or a job in a few months. That uncertainty affects productivity, morale, and the ability of labs to retain highly trained scientists.

This is why the DRIVE Act is important & urgent. This funding could help labs remain operational during grant delays, funding gaps, or unsuccessful renewals. That support would help preserve jobs, retain highly skilled researchers, protect ongoing projects, and ensure continuity in scientific research and training.

Massachusetts is a global leader in biomedical research and innovation. But maintaining that leadership requires stable support for the scientists and trainees doing this work every day. Without that stability, we risk losing talented researchers, disrupting critical research programs, and weakening the scientific workforce that drives medical innovation in our state.

Kathleen Desevin
Graduate Student
UMass Chan Medical School

I study the impact of fathers’ lifestyle and environment before conception on kids’ health. As you may know, UMass Chan is one of the many institutions currently getting hit hard by federal research budget cuts. Having lived in Massachusetts since my college years when I first experienced the vibrant biomedical research community here, I decided to come to UMass Chan for my PhD in 2021.

However, the turbulent state of American science has had me living in constant worry about whether I will be able to finish my education. Our research group is suffering heavily from the loss of research funds. In the past year, my more senior colleagues in the group have had to uproot their lives and moved out of MA to continue their research careers. As I progress further into my doctoral training, I find myself losing intellectual support that I have received from my colleagues.

The current climate of the biotech job market in Massachusetts also led me to question myself if I had made the right choice coming here for my graduate studies. Last year, UMass Chan had to rescind almost all of the PhD offers. I fear that my fellow graduate students, and those looking to apply to grad school are also feeling discouraged from coming and staying here due to the uncertain future of science. I came to realize that the current mass exodus of scientists from the Commonwealth is going to undo the progress built through many years of collaborative work and cutting edge research, which makes up a significant chunk of the Massachusetts economy.

As a graduate student, I have been fortunate all these years to be able to work on things that I am passionate about, and I hope to keep doing work on similar topics in the future so we can better understand the effects on parents’ lifestyles on the health of their children. But unfortunately this work also requires funding and community support, which we are currently losing. I hope the DRIVE Act goes through so that there will be more support for state-level research funding, since it would not only ensure that Massachusetts remains at the forefront of biomedical research, but also ensure that the next generation of scientists are able to stay and do the work.

Tori Votow
Clinical Psychologist
McLean Hospital

My research aims to improve outcomes for people with addiction by ensuring that treatments are personalized to an individual. I became interested in this work before even entering college — I grew up in Kentucky, which was the epicenter of the prescription opioid epidemic, and I witnessed firsthand the devastating consequences of addiction on people and communities.

Those early experiences set me on the long path to earning my PhD in clinical psychology, which is a degree that trains me both to provide therapy and conduct scientific research. As a clinician-scientist, my work is directly driven by the needs of the patients I treat. And in my clinical roles, I've had the privilege of witnessing what good treatment actually does for people. Through medications and evidence-based therapy, patients reconnect with hobbies they'd lost to addiction, repair relationships, hold steady employment and housing, and regain a sense of control over their lives. 

Although we've made real progress in addiction treatment, significant gaps remain. My research focuses on two of these gaps. The first is improving outcomes for people receiving medications for opioid addiction. These medications are highly effective — but about half of patients leave treatment prematurely, which puts them at serious risk for relapse and overdose. I'm working to identify who is most at risk, so those individuals can receive more intensive, targeted support before they're lost to care. The second line of research focuses on developing treatments for people who have both a substance use disorder and another psychiatric condition, like depression or anxiety. These disorders commonly occur together, yet there's been a significant gap in treatments that address both at the same time. What that means is that patients get help for one problem but leave feeling like a big part of the puzzle was not addressed – and that untreated depression or anxiety can be a big risk factor for substance use.

This kind of research is best done in hospital settings, where patients can participate in clinical trials and cutting-edge studies. But researchers in those settings depend on grants… historically, federal grants. That's especially hard for junior scientists like me, because it takes time to build a track record and earn the trust of funders. The NIH has long addressed this through career development awards, which is funding specifically designed to support scientists at this early stage. My own path toward one of those awards has now been significantly derailed. Grant review has been delayed twice — by months each time — and a grant that would previously have been considered for funding is now unlikely to move forward due to changes in how the NIH reviews and funds research.

The impacts of federal funding chaos on addiction science are broader than my own setbacks. Since February 2025, approximately $34 million in addiction research grants have been terminated across the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Dozens of staff with specialized expertise have been let go. And this administration has repeatedly proposed merging those two institutes — a move that would shrink both budgets, reduce staff with specialized expertise, and likely eliminate specialized programs that direct dedicated funding toward solving pressing problems, like the opioid crisis. 

I am deeply troubled about the long-term impact of this chaos on people with addiction. Disruptions in federal funding translate into treatments that don't get developed and, most importantly, people with addiction who never get life-saving care. We still have a long way to go in reducing the suffering caused by addiction. Massachusetts has an opportunity to help fill this gap by investing in the researchers and the research that serve these communities. 

Fiona Bennitt
Graduate Student, Engineering
UMass Amherst

My lab researches rivers and water resources using cutting-edge techniques. Though I have been fortunate to not be impacted directly by the Trump administration, the cuts have definitely impacted our lab. My funding comes from a grant I won from NASA, and because it is renewed annually, I fear that each year will be the last. Or, worse, the Administration could recall the funds that support my tuition, fees, and stipend. My two lab mates both rely on NSF grants that are also paid out annually. Because of the uncertainty around cuts, my PI was unable to hire any new PhD students for Fall 2025, as he was unable to ascertain if his current students would suddenly be without their current funds.

Future grant applications have also been paused. My lab mate had hoped to apply for the grant I have. It is typically due in early February, but as of today, January 7th, it still has not been solicited--no official call published or deadline set. The PhD students in my department who have lost funding have had to turn to TA roles that would normally go to masters students, further shrinking the number of people able to progress through our program.

It is clear that the tap has been turned off. Today's students are tomorrow’s teachers, researchers, mentors, and leaders. If we cannot continue to recruit new students, we cannot build towards a more just and equitable future that benefits everyone.

Funding uncertainty is impacting UMass’s ability to recruit new talent. Without the DRIVE Act to shore up funding, UMass will struggle to grow its research apparatus along with continuing to contribute to Massachusetts’s role as a leader in higher education research within the US.

Brittany Rosener
Postdoctoral Associate, Systems Biology
UMass Chan Medical School

I’m Dr. Brittany Rosener, a postdoctoral researcher at UMass Chan Medical School. I moved to Massachusetts 9 years ago to pursue my PhD in Biomedical Sciences at UMass Chan choosing to come here because Boston and the Commonwealth are global beacons of innovative biological research and offered the opportunity to build a long-term career. 

Since graduating in 2023 I’ve remained in my PhD Thesis lab as a postdoctoral researcher where I’ve dedicated my time to the discovery of new antibiotics that can be used to treat life-threatening treatment-resistant bacterial infections that plague our hospital systems and kill millions globally each year. My advisor and I have built a collaborative network across Massachusetts universities including UMass Amherst and MIT. With this accumulation of established resources and knowledge from longstanding labs and the participation of bright motivated undergrad and graduate students we will be able to scale up antibiotic discovery at a scale most pharmaceutical companies shy away from due to low profit potential. 

This essential but low-profit research largely falls to universities, yet our ability to sustain it has been severely disrupted by growing uncertainty in federal funding. As my colleagues have mentioned, layoffs have become a visible result of this funding stability crisis and I was not spared. Earlier this year, I received a layoff notice and for 7 months this year, my advisor and I were forced to re-budgeting, reduce research, and submit additional NIH grants to simply keep my position. While we secured one additional year of funding in November for me, with everything going on, that one year still doesn’t feel like a guarantee.

I love Massachusetts, and want to build my life and career here conducting the kind of biomedical research that universities uniquely sustain. My husband and I moved here believing my STEM career would provide long-term stability, but growing funding uncertainty has made that future feel increasingly fragile given we cannot survive on his single income alone. I’m watching highly trained colleagues go a year or more without work in Massachusetts after earning a PhD, enduring repeated layoffs, or leaving the state altogether for more secure biotech environments. Funding instability doesn’t just slow science, it drives away people and erodes decades of expertise invested in. As costs rise and federal support remains uncertain, many of us are being forced to consider where we can realistically continue to work. We see that this DRIVE Act would help restore stability, retain talent, and ensure Massachusetts remains a place where both scientific excellence and long-term investment can thrive.

Marina Krykbaeva
Postdoctoral Associate, RNA Therapeutics
UMass Chan Medical School

My name is Marina Krykbaeva and I am a postdoctoral researcher and a member of the CORE-UAW organizing committee at UMass Chan. I work on understanding how mutations in RNA processing enzymes contribute to the development of leukemia. While my lab has been fortunate to maintain funding despite the turbulent situation at the NIH this year, I have had to watch several of my colleagues get laid off in other UMass labs due to the shortage of funds. The first half of this year was a very confusing and distressing time at UMass as multi-departmental layoffs were mandated and there were several months where no one knew who would be able to keep their jobs. As you might imagine, this was extremely stressful and made it difficult to focus on work in the lab. 

From the beginning of this year, close to 10% of postdocs were forced to leave UMass. These were researchers who were dedicated and passionate about their work and wanted to stay in their labs. Postdoctoral research is a crucial stage in a researcher's career that determines whether the postdoc will be competitive enough to gain a faculty appointment. Unfortunately, many postdocs had to quickly find new jobs that were not always the best fit for them and left behind years of work that may now be abandoned and never get published. These layoffs have had a disproportionate impact on the international researchers who make up the majority of our workforce, as their only options were to find work or leave the U.S. These career setbacks will certainly make faculty appointments more difficult to achieve in an already extremely competitive field. Many of those who were laid off plan to leave Massachusetts and move abroad as they do not see a future for themselves here due to the instability in research funding.

Many labs at UMass Chan have had to reduce personnel, most of which were postdoctoral researchers and senior research staff. This has resulted in loss of generational knowledge, making it more difficult for the younger researchers who will eventually join these labs. Senior staff are essential in training junior researchers in both hands-on experimental techniques as well as design of rigorous scientific approaches. Loss of these researchers has already resulted in loss of productivity, fewer publications of findings that would benefit the public and the scientific community, and time and funding wasted on projects that are now discontinued. The situation has become so chaotic that there are labs that can only plan their budgets month-to-month now, unsure of whether they should be sending out termination notices to employees. Given the urgency of this situation, I want to emphasize that we need funding support now, not months or years from now.

Dan Rourke
Graduate Student, Renewable Energy Engineering
UMass Lowell

I’m a PhD researcher in the Renewable Energy Engineering program at UMass Lowell. My research is on the types of batteries that will be needed in order to completely decarbonize the grid using wind and solar energy. This technology is going to be crucial over the next few decades because the rest of the world is transitioning to renewable energy right now even if the U.S. is lagging behind.

A lot of great work has been done to make Massachusetts the center of the battery industry in the U.S. This is an industry that will undoubtedly be growing rapidly over the coming years, as long as the research is conducted that’s needed to advance the field and the talent is cultivated at our state’s universities, two things that go hand in hand. As you can imagine, almost all of the funding from federal agencies which normally funds this type of research has been cut over the past year. UMass Lowell explicitly told everyone at the university not to bring on any new researchers for this current academic year due to budget concerns.

Losing one year’s worth of researchers is a serious blow, but for that trend to continue would be disastrous to this industry. PhD researchers at UMass Lowell are paid about $23,000 for 9 months of research, and then go on to build the battery industry and make good wages contributing to Massachusetts’ tax base. The funds from the DRIVE Act are not only a worthy investment because they will further research that can help mitigate climate change or cure cancer, but they will secure the future of the research economy that Massachusetts is built on. I’m grateful for Governor Healey’s support, and am happy to help any way I can to get this legislation passed.

Sabdiki Chaurasia
Graduate Student
UMass Lowell

I work on energy storage technologies that support renewable energy integration and grid reliability. This research is critical for meeting climate goals and building resilient clean energy infrastructure. Because this work depends on consistent, long-term investment, multiple iterative research equipments, cuts and instability in federal funding has slowed progress and disrupted innovation. State-level funding through the DRIVE Act will provide stability, protect clean energy research in the face of federal uncertainty, and help sustain the workforce and technological momentum needed to meet long-term climate and economic goals.

Elyse McCormick
Graduate Student
UMass Amherst

I research how diet influences bumble bee health, specifically how it helps bees defend against parasites. Bumble bees are critical native pollinators that are essential for ecosystem function and agricultural staple crops of New England, like blueberries. Funding cuts and uncertainty make it hard to plan my research costs, and ultimately make it hard to plan for publications, and going on the job market, among other things. State funding at a time like this is essential to supporting the large body of graduate student workers (especially in STEM) in Massachusetts because American science runs on graduate student success.

Samuel Kingsley
Graduate Student
UMass Chan

Recent changes over the past year in the funding of research universities has drastically changed the landscape of the laboratory for the worse. I work in a lab at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School that utilizes C. elegans and E. coli to study aging, metabolism, and healthspan. We intend our findings to translate to advances in human health as well as insight into the pathology of type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and Irritable Bowel Disease. Since funding cuts occurred last year we have had to cut our lab’s workforce by 33%. This has caused financial stress onto those who were laid off, and workload stress onto those who are still here. I have personally witnessed labs close up shop entirely because of this loss of funding. The funding situation in our labs is so dire, I got in trouble for ordering rubber bands when we ran out. The layoffs in our department have also extended to custodial and maintenance work, meaning scientists have had to take on some of this work. Staffing these roles  is essentially to allow the lab to continue running and for scientists to be able dedicate their time to perform their research.Hearing about the DRIVE Act was like a light at the end of the tunnel. Yet there has been complete silence about the DRIVE Act since its announcement in August of last year. We desperately need this funding to support our lab as well as the hundreds of other labs in the UMass system. Funding is still tenuous and grant reviews have all been delayed so the chances of our lab or others losing funding is still very real. Please release the DRIVE Act funds.

Ivano Mocavini
Postdoctoral Researcher
Columbia University, formerly UMass Chan

I joined UMass Chan in 2023 as a postdoctoral fellow to study the mechanisms of paternal epigenetic inheritance, meaning the study of how dads’ habits and lived experience can biologically impact their kids. In particular, my research focuses on developing novel tools to study the packaging of the genome in the sperm head.

While private funding agencies tend to focus on disease-oriented research, most labs like ours that work on basic aspects of biology heavily rely on public funding to continue advancing our knowledge of basic science, laying the groundwork for further advancements.

Lack of funding from the NIH has pushed my department to lay off several researchers, including myself, forcing most of us international scientists to quickly find another job or face the prospect of being forced out of the country. While I was fortunate enough to find a new position in another state, that hasn’t been the case for everyone. 

With the current uncertainty at the federal level, states like Massachusetts must do all that they can to retain the talent that has made this state the international hub of science and technology that it is.

Jack Cheng
Graduate Student
UMass Chan

From the perspective of an international student, the US has built a funding structure that supports biomedical research that other countries can only dream of. People from around the world come to the US and stay here because of the research environment that the US government has fostered through funding. 

I considered moving to Canada or the UK to study twice in my career. Once as an undergrad, where I had received an offer from one of the top research universities in hand. My PI at the time, who was also an immigrant scientist, persuaded me to stay. He made a strong case of how the US's research funding structure encourages original, exploratory science research like no one else. The second time was when I was applying for graduate programs. My PI then, another immigrant scientist, strongly encouraged me to stay in the US, citing the same reason.

The current federal administration is actively dismantling the scientific research dominance that the US maintained over the years through funding support. This funding instability has made me unsure if the US is the best place to do research anymore. The DRIVE Act gives the Massachusetts state government an opportunity to preserve our thriving research environment, and protect our investments in groundbreaking research.