I became a scientist, but I don’t know if my career will exist in five years | Opinion

I stood there, one hand clutching the hastily opened envelope and the other gripping the stairway railing of our Sacramento home. “Dad, we finally made it!” I had just been accepted into UC Davis.

I transferred to UC Davis to study biotechnology after two years at American River College. I grew up in a working-class family in Sacramento County, and, up until recently, had lived my whole life there. If you’ve ever been to the North Highlands library, there’s a good chance you saw me volunteering there back in high school.

Since then, I’ve graduated from UC Davis with honors and am now a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My research investigates how plants sense nutrients so we can grow healthier plants using fewer resources like fertilizers.

Before becoming a scientist, I took for granted the everyday technologies that surround us. We don’t think about it, but many of these advancements stem from work done at universities. The products of university discoveries are all around us: Warfarin, a life-saving blood clot medication, was developed here at UW-Madison. Closer to home, researchers at UC Davis developed tomatoes that could withstand mechanical harvesting and saved the California tomato industry in the 1960s. Meanwhile, 60% of strawberries eaten globally come from varieties developed at UC Davis.

University research breeds new innovation, powers our local economy and invests in our future. But all of this is now being threatened by a recent and sustained onslaught on science.

While university research fuels local agriculture, helping make Sacramento the farm-to-fork capital, it also brings money and jobs to our community. In 2023, Sacramento State University received over $11 million in research grants. UC Davis research creates 10,000 jobs and supports the economic activity of our region to the tune of $2 billion.

The lion’s share of research funding comes from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The pursuit of knowledge is one of America’s most successful ventures, and the large-scale investment in universities following World War II contributed to an extraordinary economic boom. Even now, in 2025, every dollar the NIH spends on research leads to a $2.56 increase in economic activity — a 256% return on our investment.

However, for nearly six months under the Trump administration, our investment in science has been under vicious attack. From halting the grant funding process again and again and again, to the unprecedented termination of huge swaths of research funding, to crippling universities by capping indirect costs at only 15 cents per dollar, to firing 10% of the NSF workforce and 6% of the NIH workforce (with the eventual goal of 25%), science in the United States is not just being threatened, it is being dismantled.

This years’ budget proposals aim to slash NSF funding by 50% and NIH funding by nearly 40%. The American Association of Universities found that $1.9 billion of NIH grants were revoked this year, including grants to study Alzheimer’s and cancer.

Programs to train aspiring scientists have also been terminated. This is personal for me: Without these training programs, I would not be a scientist today.

So many families in Sacramento see STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) as a path toward a better future. My family was no exception. I studied every day, saved every penny, leveraged every resource to get my education and a brighter future for my family.

I became a scientist, but I don’t know if my career will exist in five years. I don’t know what the next generation of scientists will do. The opportunities I had as an aspiring researcher are gone. The path to a better life for kids in Sacramento is slipping away.