Massachusetts scientists came together Tuesday evening inside the Robbins Memorial Town Hall in Arlington to discuss their concerns about the Trump administration’s disruption of scientific research and the federal science workforce with House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, who recently won the Democratic primary to retain her seat as representative for the Massachusetts 5th Congressional District.
“It’s one thing to say NIH or the CDC lost its funding, that’s tough [for scientists], but that’s not usually a tangible thing for humans, we don’t connect with that,” said Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) Organizing Manager Nick Savelli in a chat with Cambridge Day. Savelli, the town hall’s lead organizer, explained that the evening’s goal was “to connect what the impact of [funding freezes] are, so that when [Clark] is defending these budget line items in Congress, she’s defending [local scientists].”
The UCS, headquartered near the corner of Brattle Square and Mount Auburn Street, is a science advocacy organization that supports a network of more than 26,000 scientists and other technical experts across the country.
Yarrow Axford moved to Massachusetts a year and a half ago to pursue a new path in her career as a science communicator, though she is still an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, where she spent a decade as a climate scientist and educator.
She did not leave because of the current administration’s attacks on university-based science, which included a temporary freeze of nearly $790 million in research funding at Northwestern, but she had heard the horror stories from her colleagues. “Everything that the federal government has done for so many decades to support scientific research in the US and create the most vibrant scientific ecosystem in the world is being undermined right now,” said Axford. In late 2025, Northwestern came to an agreement with the government to restore much of its funding.
She has a more personal link to the issue, beyond just her membership in the USC and help in organizing the town hall.
Axford suffers from Lyme disease, and she said that when the new administration took the reigns and froze Northwestern funds, she learned that “promising” Lyme research at the University was temporarily halted by the freeze.
The research program was led by late Northwestern bacteriologist Brandon Jutras, and had made several recent breakthroughs, though its operations were disrupted when the federal funding freeze affected the school’s research funding. Jutras passed unexpectedly last month, so the future of his research is uncertain at the moment.
“It was just so painful to learn that [the funding had been halted],” said Axford. “Here in Massachusetts, we need more information about how to deal with tick-borne illnesses, and here’s this fabulous research that is put on hold because of destructive nonsense.”
Savelli brought up Mariana Matus, who was replaced at the last second as one of the event’s panelists. Coming out of MIT, she founded Biobot Analytics, a company which tracks infectious diseases in wastewater. Savelli explained how Matus saw 50 municipal contracts fall to 8 after the administration’s massive cuts to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “Now there are 42 towns that aren’t getting the early warning signs of infectious diseases in their communities,” said Savelli.
While temporary freezes or confusion about grant funding do not affect all research programs equally, Axford said that what may never “bounces back” is “trust in the federal governments and the ability to plan around that trust.”
As she pointed out, universities typically choose how many students to admit to various programs based on how much funding “has usually come in the door,” but now many institutions were at a loss over how much funding they could realistically count on.
Last year, for example, the Harvard Crimson reported that the school’s Biostatistics graduate program had to cut its admitted class in half, and the Population Health Sciences program planned to make 25% fewer offers in the following admissions cycle. Statistician Sebastian Haneuse attributed these cuts to confusion with federal grant funding, according to the Crimson.
Protesters gather outside, and some inside
Dozens were posted at the foot of the town hall’s steps for a ‘Rally for Palestine’ protest organized by several pro-Palestinian groups, including the Boston Democratic Socialists of America branch.
Stephanie Houten, an organizer with Medford for Palestine, told Cambridge Day that her group was protesting Clark’s position on US military aid to Israel, and the UCS for hosting Clark. She said the protestors were outside of the event because of her decision to not support the Block the Bombs Act, which would restrict the United States from transferring certain weapons and defensive systems to Israel. Clark told Zeteo in July that she did not plan on co-sponsoring the bill.
Houten also pointed to the environmental harms of war, saying it was ironic the Clark was at an event to support sciences, including climate sciences, while “the bombs that [Israel] drops every day are causing so much damage to the climate.”
The protest was surrounded by Arlington police officers, several of whom told Cambridge Day that they were there both to monitor the protest and provide security for the event.
A bit down the street, members of the Climate Action Campaign were out, though in smaller numbers, to call Clark’s attention to protecting the climate. “Climate can’t wait,” said Jordan, who did not wish to share her last name. She said the group regularly held protests near the town hall, but this time they were doing it to tell Clark to “rally other members of Congress” and prioritize climate policy in the coming legislative session.
Clark, the Democratic Minority Whip, holds the second highest position in the House Democratic Caucus, helping marshal the party’s voting strategies.
One protestor inside the town hall rose as Clark was making her introduction. Explaining how “decisions made in Washington show up in whether research can move forward,” the protestor shouted, “and whether Gaza lives.” The protestor was quickly ushered out of the room by event staff.
Clark later took a moment to address her stance on the topic, saying that, “the time for a blank check for military aid to Israel is over.”
Concerned Scientists
Four panelists from different stages of their sciences careers were brought together to speak with Clark in a chat led by UCS President Gretchen Goldman. The panelists were Professor of Earth and Environment Lucy Hutyra and Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Dean Jack Dennerlein, both hailing from Boston University. David Nelson represented the “small business” side of the panel, the president of Aerodyne Research out of Billerica. Kristen Ammons represented the early-career perspective, a Ph.D. candidate in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
All could offer a human perspective of the difficulties currently faces by scientists in the United States, and all pointed primarily to an already active brain drain from American universities and research institutions.
Ammons, soon to complete her Ph.D. and dive head first into the job market, told Clark that the career path she had expected to follow, as an aeronautics student who had done NASA-funded research and interned with the agency, had all but disappeared.
She pointed to the more than 10,000 federally-employed Ph.D. scientists removed from their posts by the current administration and explained that “those who would be providing me with reference letters” were now her “competitors” in the job market.
This loss of a guaranteed pipeline to a successful career as a Ph.D. scientists was echoed by Hutyra and Dennerlein, who both described direct examples of students and early-career researchers leaving their programs or reconsidering their careers in the sciences. Dennerlein told the story of Manny, a Ph.D. student who received money from the federal government to study language recovery after a stroke. Under the current administration, the grant was abruptly canceled, and the research halted in its tracks. “At this stage, we don’t know what to expect, and so therefore we can’t plan appropriately,” said Dennerlein.
He also said that when stability is lost in science, more than just research is lost. “We lose discoveries that improve the lives of all Americans.”
Nelson, whose company makes scientific instruments, said he built his company “with the help of consistent federal government investment” but now that the status quo had been upended, “the most powerful scientific enterprise ever created is being disbanded before out eyes.” Beyond direct research funding, his company relies on instrument sales to survive, which have fallen as scientists have seen their own budgets be cut or frozen. Nelson also had a federal grant to study the chemical pollutants excreted by chemical holding tanks, but since the election more than a year ago, he hasn’t gotten “a single penny.”
For a small company like his, prolonged disruption could mean bleeding jobs, and eventually losing “60 high-tech jobs” if the company is forced to shutter its operations.
Several panelists stressed the idea that damage done now cannot be easily reversed by restoring funding. Nelson said his company took decades to develop, “and that could be destroyed in the next years or several months.”
Clark saw the loss as particularly significant in Massachusetts science, which she said was the best in the nation at creating drugs and bringing them to the market. “But if we take people out, we have nothing,” said Clark.
Questions from the audience shifted the discussion to the people waiting on the current scientific system. Tom Hopcroft, who ran in the 2nd Middlesex Race before dropping out in August, asked Clark about what Congress could do to remedy pauses on rare-disease trials and research. His son has a rare liver disease, and Clark said the “cruelty at the top of the top” was “just bad economics, and anti-innovation.”
Another audience member, Laura Senier, a Sociology and Health Sciences Professor at Northeastern University, focused her questions on the proposed Office of Management and Budget (OMB) changes which could give the body a greater ability to pause and terminate scientific grants. She also asked what the half of the Congress who was willing to step up, referring to the Democrat minority in both the House and Senate, could do to fight for science.
Clark acknowledged the slew of public complaints which notified her to the proposed OMB rule changes, and called it concerning, explaining how some of the greatest supporters of government funding for the sciences, who were Republicans, “don’t talk about it anymore.”
She said the solution was helping the Democrats win back the House. “When we win, we hold the gavels, we have subpoena power and we can halt this, and that is exactly what we are going to do.”
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