Massachusetts is dealing with a disaster that threatens the innovation engine that has powered our economic system within the twenty first century. The state has already had a couple of thousand Nationwide Institutes of Well being (NIH) and Nationwide Science Basis (NSF) analysis grants value $2.6 billion cancelled by the Trump administration. State leaders in all sectors must face the disagreeable incontrovertible fact that federal funding for scientific, biomedical, and engineering analysis is prone to be reduce additional.
These cutbacks are coming at a troublesome time for Massachusetts. Whereas it nonetheless has the second-highest per capita Gross State Product within the nation, analysis by the Pioneer Institute discovered that its progress has lagged the nationwide common since 2020, and the state is ranked third worst throughout this era for personal sector job creation.
Massachusetts can’t afford a extreme decline in its research-dependent progress industries. Collectively, training and well being providers make use of one million individuals within the Commonwealth. The state’s largest non-government employers are well being programs with tutorial medical facilities: Mass Basic Brigham and Beth Israel Lahey Well being. The College of Massachusetts is quantity three, adopted at quantity 5 by Harvard and at quantity 9 by MIT. Due to our focus of fantastic analysis universities and tutorial medical facilities, Massachusetts obtained the best per capita NIH and NSF funding within the nation in fiscal yr 2024.
The residents of the Commonwealth have seen the essential influence of this funding. Nice analysis establishments have attracted the perfect and brightest younger researchers from across the globe. Labs have been arrange, applied sciences have been invented, life-saving therapeutics been found, startups have been launched, and a whole ecosystem of jobs has been created. Massachusetts’ life sciences sector alone helps 143,000 jobs.
However all of that is in danger with federal cutbacks in NIH and NSF funding. It’s crucial that we act now to protect the analysis infrastructure that Massachusetts has constructed so fastidiously over the past many years. That is the time for the Commonwealth’s management in authorities, academia, enterprise, and philanthropy to hitch forces and take daring motion. We’re all on this collectively.
That is what we have to do:
First, it’s crucial that the governor and legislature ship a message to the schools and tutorial medical facilities {that a} plan for short-term bridge funding is in course of. Such funding is the one strategy to forestall labs from closing, medical trials from shutting down, and scientific and medical expertise from leaving the state. As soon as analysis laboratories are closed, they are going to be troublesome to reestablish.
Second, the state ought to approve a plan on this legislative session to supply one yr of funding equal to half of the federal funding cutbacks.
Universities and medical facilities ought to be required to match the state assist. These tutorial establishments should both use endowment cash or increase analysis funds from their particular person and basis donors.
Third, the plan ought to be easy. There’s no want for overview panels. The analysis that shall be funded has already been totally vetted by scientific specialists earlier than receiving federal grants. The state funding will solely be used for analysis tasks whose authorised grants have been pulled by the Trump administration.
Fourth, Massachusetts additionally must plan for the brand new actuality of a sharply diminished function for the federal authorities in analysis funding. The governor ought to convene a panel that features authorities, tutorial, basis, and enterprise leaders to design a roadmap for the long run.
The time to behave is now. Decisive motion will allow us to protect our world-leading analysis infrastructure and defend the financial well being of our Commonwealth for the good thing about all our residents.
Alan M. Leventhal is the founding father of Beacon Capital Companions and served as United States Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark from 2022-2025. L. Rafael Reif served as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise from 2012-2022.
