His medical research focuses on advances potentially that save lives in cancer treatment and develop tools to more easily diagnose weakening diseases. His studies in mathematics could make online systems more robust and safe.
But as the academic year opens, the work of UCLA's professors in these and many other fields has been in danger from the suspension of the Trump administration of $ 584 million in subsidies funds, which the president of the University of California, James B. Milliken, called a “lounge” to his transformative research.
The freezing occurred after a United States Department of Justice on July 29 that found that the University had violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students by providing an inadequate response to the alleged anti -Semitism they faced after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
The fight for financing unemployment intensified on Friday after the Trump administration demanded that UCLA pay a fine of $ 1 billion, among other concessions, to resolve the accusations, and the governor of California Gavin Newsom said that the State will sue, calling the proposal “extortion.”
Amid high tensions in Westwood, thousands of university academics are in limbo. In total, at least 800 subsidies have been frozen, mainly from the National Foundation of Sciences and the National Health Institutes.
UCLA academics described days of confusion while fighting to understand how the loss of subsidies would affect their work and fight to discover new sources of financing, or roles that would ensure their continuous payment, or that of their colleagues. While teachers still have work and payment checks to resort, many others, including postgraduate students, trust subsidy funds for their salaries, registration and medical care.
However, at least for the moment, several academics told The Times that their work had not yet been interrupted. Until now, no dismissals have been announced.
Sydney Campbell, a UCLA cancer researcher whose subsidy funds has been reduced, is located within the Biomedical Science Research building in the UCLA.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Sydney Campbell, pancreas cancer researcher and postdoctoral scholar of the David Geffen Faculty of UCLA, said that his work, whose objective is to understand how the diet affects the disease, continues for now. She has an independent scholarship that “hopefully will protect most of my salary.” But others, he said, don't have that luxury.
“It will absolutely affect people's livelihoods. I already know people … with families who have to take salary cuts almost immediately,” said Campbell, who works for a laboratory that has lost two subsidies from the National Health Institutes, including one that finances their research.
Pancreatic cancer is among the most fatal cancers, but Campbell's work could lead to a better understanding of it, racing the way for stronger prophylactic programs, and treatment plans, which ultimately can help dominate the scourge.
“Understanding how diet can affect cancer development could lead to preventive strategies that we can recommend to patients in the future,” he said. “At this time we cannot do that effectively because we do not have the information about the underlying biology. Our studies will help us to make recommendations based on science.”
Campbell's work, and that of many others in UCLA, is potentially innovative. But soon you could wait.
“We have people who do not know if they will be able to buy experimental materials for the rest of the month,” he said.
Fears of the existential crisis
For some, the cuts have caused something close to an existential crisis.
After Professor Dino Di Carlo, president of the Bioengineering Department of UCLA Samueli, learned that around 20 subsidies were suspended there, including four in his laboratory with a value of approximately $ 1 million, he felt a deep sadness. He said he doesn't know why his subsidies were frozen, and there may be no money to pay his six researchers.
Then, Di Carlo, who is investigating the diagnosis for Lyme and other tick -transmitted diseases, turned to LinkedIn, where he wrote a position that invoked Franz Kafka's novel “The Trial.” The disturbing story is about a man named Josef K. who wakes up and is under arrest and then in trial, without understanding the situation.
“Like Josef K., really affected people (the public, young scientists, patients who expect better diagnostic treatments and tools) are wondering: what crime did we commit?” Di Carlo wrote. “They are being judged by a system that no longer explains itself.”
LinkedIn's publication quickly attracted dozens of comments and more than 1,000 other answers. Di Carlo, who has been working to find jobs for researchers who depend on payment checks that come from subsidies now suspended, said he appreciated support.
But, Goodwill has its limits. “It doesn't pay rent for a student this month,” he said.
Di Carlo's research focuses in part on developing a home test that would detect Lyme and other tick -transmitted diseases, which are increasing. Because there is currently no product approved by the US Food and Medicines Administration. UU.
“This diagnosis delay prevents timely treatment, allowing the disease to progress and potentially lead to long -term health problems,” he said. “A quick point of attention test would allow people to receive immediate results, allowing early treatment with antibiotics when the disease is more easily addressed, significantly reducing the risk of chronic symptoms and improving health results.”
Di Carlo regretted what he called “a continuous assault on the scientific community” by the Trump administration, which has canceled billions of dollars in funds from National Health Institutes for Universities throughout the country.
“Simply … it hasn't decreased,” said Di Carlo.
Declaration of funds
Some teachers who have lost subsidies have spent long hours fighting to ensure new sources of financing.
Di Carlo said he was in meetings throughout the week to identify which researchers are affected by cuts and try to find out: “Can we support these students?” They have also tried to determine if some could move to other projects that still have funds or receive teaching assistant positions, among other options.
It is not alone in those efforts. Mathematics professor Terence Tao has also lost a subsidy worth approximately $ 750,000. But Tao said he was more distressed for the freezing of a subsidy of $ 25 million for the Pure and applied Mathematics Institute of UCLA. The loss of financing for the Institute, where Tao is director of special projects, is “actually quite existential,” he said, because the subsidy is “necessary to finance operations” there.
Tao, who is the president of James and Carol Collins at the Faculty of Letters and Sciences, said the pain goes beyond the loss of funds. “Brushing, and basically the lack of due process in general, only aggravates the damage,” Tao said. “We have no warning.”
A luminaire in its field, Tao conducts an investigation that examines, in part, if a group of numbers is random or structured. His work could lead to advances in cryptography that can eventually make online systems, such as those used for financial transactions, be safer.
“It is important to do this type of research: if we do not, it is possible that an adversary, for example, can discover these weaknesses that we are not looking for at all,” Tao said. “Therefore, you need this additional theoretical confirmation that the things you think are really working as planned, [and you need to] Also explore the negative space of what does not work. “
Tao said it has been encouraged by the donations that the Mathematics Institute has received from private donors in recent days, so far around $ 100,000.
“We are fighting for short -term funds because we need to keep the lights on for the next few months,” Tao said.
Rafael Jaime, president of United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents 48,000 academic workers within the University of California, including around 8,000 in UCLA, said he was not aware of any worker who has not been paid until now, but that the problem could reach a critical point at the end of August.
He said that the UC system “should do everything possible to ensure that workers do not pay off.”
What comes next?
An important stressful factor for academics: uncertainty.
Some researchers whose subsidies were suspended said they have not received much UCLA guidance on a way to follow. Part of that anxiety was ventilated in Zoom calls last week, including a call throughout the UCLA attended by some 3,000 members of the Faculty.
UCLA administrators said they are exploring Stopgap options, including possible “bridge” emergency funds to beneficiaries to pay researchers or maintain laboratories such as those who use rodents as subjects.
Some UCLA academics worried about a brain leak. Di Carlo said that undergraduate students who advise have begun to ask for their advice on universities abroad for the postgraduate school.
“This has been the first time I have seen undergraduate students who have asked about foreign universities for their postgraduate studies,” he said. “I listen, 'What about Switzerland? … What about the University of Tokyo?' This assault on science is making students think that this is not the place for them. ”
But it could be said that the most pressing concern of researchers is to continue their work.
Campbell explained that he has been affected by pancreas cancer: he lost someone close to her. She and her colleagues do “for families” who have also been played by the disease.
“That the work that is already in progress has the possibility of being arrested in some way is really disappointing,” he said. “Not only for me, but for all those patients I could help him.”
