First-year Ph.D. students at Harvard Medical School's Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program are grappling with uncertainty as they search for labs and mentors amidst significant federal funding cuts. Students voice disappointment over the lack of clarity regarding lab capacities and funding for salaries and projects. The Trump administration's recent moves to freeze billions in grants have prompted Harvard to sue the government, stressing that such cuts could disrupt the vital partnership between government and academia that promotes medical innovation and training future researchers.
I'm supposed to be choosing labs, but all of the labs I'm talking to and rotating in, they have no idea what the funding situation is, if they can take students, if they have money for our salaries or the projects we want to do... It feels disappointing.
Scientists say the losses threaten to upend the government-higher education partnership that has led to medical breakthroughs that saved millions of lives and launched numerous companies in the post-war period.
Graduate students are the engines in our labs that are generating all these new ideas and all this data... It's so fundamentally important: the ability to recruit amazing talent, keep amazing talent.
#harvard-medical-school #federal-funding-cuts #research-opportunities #phd-challenges #innovation-ecosystem
Collection
[
|
...
]