At the start of a Friday morning seminar at UC Davis this past spring, a student we’re calling Tiana, a junior studying marine and coastal science, was joking with a friend at her table. “We were low-key loud,” she said. She tried to shush her friend — their professor, Connie Champagne, wasn’t overly strict though always started on time. But Champagne took a few minutes to goof around with them. “I think she was just trying to let us have a moment of some joy before she laid on the bad news,” said Tiana.
Champagne told them the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had notified the school that $1.3 million in grants, funding seven programs to help aspiring researchers like them, had just been slashed.
Those annual offerings, the oldest dating to 1988, prioritized students often underrepresented in science: those who were first in their family to go to college, young adults coming out of foster care and students from underresourced communities, said Champagne, who directs the college’s Educational Enrichment and Outreach Programs. They enabled hundreds of students in the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences to enter biotechnology, health sciences and other research fields.
Those programs let students focus on their research. Instead of taking summer jobs in fast food or tutoring, they got fellowships and stipends that let them work in the lab, attend professional conferences, get into specialized research programs offered by other schools and more. Those research experiences are critical to getting into competitive graduate programs and the kind of leg up affluent students have always had.
Champagne’s news hit hard. “Everyone was crying,” said another student we’re calling Emily. (Tiana and Emily spoke on condition of anonymity because they fear harassment.)
The abrupt cancellations will soon slash the number of young researchers graduating from area campuses, imperiling investment in a critical sector of the local market.
Those annual offerings, the oldest dating to 1988, prioritized students often underrepresented in science: those who were first in their family to go to college, young adults coming out of foster care and students from underresourced communities, said Champagne, who directs the college’s Educational Enrichment and Outreach Programs. They enabled hundreds of students in the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences to enter biotechnology, health sciences and other research fields.
Those programs let students focus on their research. Instead of taking summer jobs in fast food or tutoring, they got fellowships and stipends that let them work in the lab, attend professional conferences, get into specialized research programs offered by other schools and more. Those research experiences are critical to getting into competitive graduate programs and the kind of leg up affluent students have always had.
Champagne’s news hit hard. “Everyone was crying,” said another student we’re calling Emily. (Tiana and Emily spoke on condition of anonymity because they fear harassment.)
The abrupt cancellations will soon slash the number of young researchers graduating from area campuses, imperiling investment in a critical sector of the local market.
A crack in the pipeline
The life sciences are rocket fuel for the Sacramento economy. In 2024, 560 companies — working on biopharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices and equipment, and more — employed almost 17,000 people in the four-county metro (Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties), according to Biocom California, a trade association. Salaries averaged $102,000. More than a fifth of those positions were manufacturing jobs.
A key reason those companies are here is the talent and ideas pouring out of UC Davis. Take biotech company Thermogenesis, which opened new gene therapy labs in Rancho Cordova in 2023. UC Davis creates a pipeline of students and startups that will use those labs to launch new ventures, CEO Chris Xu told CBS Sacramento. “They can come in with a brilliant idea and say, ‘I have this idea. I have a design for this product. Can you handle the rest?’” Xu said.
Attracting and keeping talent is a big barrier for those firms. At an event last September put on by local employer collaborative Talent Pipeline Management Biotechnology, leaders from companies like Jackson Laboratory, Thermogenesis and Thermo Fisher Scientific talked about the challenges: high-turnover in entry-level roles, the time and resources required to train new hires, rapidly changing skill demands in a fast-changing industry.
The now-terminated UC Davis programs were turning out the talent those industries needed. Tiana and Emily were part of a program called Maximizing Access to Research Careers. Since it started in 2009, three-quarters of its students have gone on to get biomedical Ph.D.s, said Champagne.
Another initiative, the 37-year-old Biology Undergraduate Scholars Program, each year took in 50 freshmen from underrepresented groups who were majoring in a life science discipline. Those students, even though they’re bright and hard-working, often enter unprepared for the rigor of STEM classes because they didn’t get the extra resources in high school available to those who are better off, Champagne said.
The program gave them academic preparation and advising, courses on basic lab skills, a community of other students also from underrepresented groups, and more. Program data show it boosted graduation rates in life sciences among those students by 25%, said Champagne. That community “was the secret sauce, really, for their success,” she said. “We had a system that worked.”
For Talia, who’s researching fish health, the loss of the MARC program means she’s not attending a program this summer put on by North Carolina State University that prepares pre-veterinary students for research careers.
Emily, a rising senior genetics and genomics major who grew up in Elk Grove, is studying the genes that contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders like autism. MARC’s cancellation means she won’t get paid to work in a lab this summer. Instead she’s applied for two summer jobs, as a tutor and front-desk receptionist. She’ll work unpaid in the lab with whatever leftover time she has. “It’s going to be a squeeze,” she said.
UC Davis’ renewal applications for MARC and another program like it for undergraduates, called Accelerated Development of Aging Researchers, got top scores from federal reviewers, according to Champagne. Both were discontinued as part of the Trump administration’s nationwide termination of similar programs.
Since January, the Trump administration has targeted for elimination programs at NIH and other agencies that promote diversity in the sciences. The NIH termination email for one of the UC Davis programs noted that “Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.” Champagne said she found the language “pretty shocking. We know that’s not true,” she said.
Destabilizing a system
Sacramento State was hit with a similar cut, according to an NIH list of terminated grants. The school’s $1.3 million Undergraduate Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement, or U-RISE, prepared students from underrepresented backgrounds — those with disabilities or from low-income families, first generation, and Black and Latino students — for doctoral programs in biomedical research. People who are Black or Hispanic or have disabilities have long been underrepresented in STEM fields.
The program paid them to do independent research under faculty supervision, covered the cost of symposiums and workshops, and helped them apply for grants and graduate programs. Since 2017, 23 of the 32 U-RISE students went on to enroll in graduate programs, according to the university. A school spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Area economic leaders see trouble ahead because of the cuts. The loss of physician-researchers coming out of universities will be a big blow to the region’s and the country’s economy, aside from halting progress on research on dementia, Parkinson’s and other diseases, said Barry Broome, president and CEO of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council.
“Venture capital will slow. Financing for the industry will slow. Taking companies public will slow,” Broome said. “We’ve built an entire economy around UC Davis.” The scientific teams that are being destabilized can’t be put back together even if the cuts are reversed in a year or two, he adds.
Tiana and Emily may not wait around to find out whether that happens. Emily is considering applying for grad school in Austria, known for its neuro-immune research.
Tiana is thinking about Canadian programs. “It feels very, very strange to even consider leaving,” she said of herself and fellow College of Biological Sciences classmates talking of pursuing graduate degrees elsewhere. “But we’re at that point with how determined we are to go into STEM.”
The life sciences are rocket fuel for the Sacramento economy. In 2024, 560 companies — working on biopharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices and equipment, and more — employed almost 17,000 people in the four-county metro (Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties), according to Biocom California, a trade association. Salaries averaged $102,000. More than a fifth of those positions were manufacturing jobs.
A key reason those companies are here is the talent and ideas pouring out of UC Davis. Take biotech company Thermogenesis, which opened new gene therapy labs in Rancho Cordova in 2023. UC Davis creates a pipeline of students and startups that will use those labs to launch new ventures, CEO Chris Xu told CBS Sacramento. “They can come in with a brilliant idea and say, ‘I have this idea. I have a design for this product. Can you handle the rest?’” Xu said.
Attracting and keeping talent is a big barrier for those firms. At an event last September put on by local employer collaborative Talent Pipeline Management Biotechnology, leaders from companies like Jackson Laboratory, Thermogenesis and Thermo Fisher Scientific talked about the challenges: high-turnover in entry-level roles, the time and resources required to train new hires, rapidly changing skill demands in a fast-changing industry.
The now-terminated UC Davis programs were turning out the talent those industries needed. Tiana and Emily were part of a program called Maximizing Access to Research Careers. Since it started in 2009, three-quarters of its students have gone on to get biomedical Ph.D.s, said Champagne.
Another initiative, the 37-year-old Biology Undergraduate Scholars Program, each year took in 50 freshmen from underrepresented groups who were majoring in a life science discipline. Those students, even though they’re bright and hard-working, often enter unprepared for the rigor of STEM classes because they didn’t get the extra resources in high school available to those who are better off, Champagne said.
The program gave them academic preparation and advising, courses on basic lab skills, a community of other students also from underrepresented groups, and more. Program data show it boosted graduation rates in life sciences among those students by 25%, said Champagne. That community “was the secret sauce, really, for their success,” she said. “We had a system that worked.”
For Talia, who’s researching fish health, the loss of the MARC program means she’s not attending a program this summer put on by North Carolina State University that prepares pre-veterinary students for research careers.
Emily, a rising senior genetics and genomics major who grew up in Elk Grove, is studying the genes that contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders like autism. MARC’s cancellation means she won’t get paid to work in a lab this summer. Instead she’s applied for two summer jobs, as a tutor and front-desk receptionist. She’ll work unpaid in the lab with whatever leftover time she has. “It’s going to be a squeeze,” she said.
UC Davis’ renewal applications for MARC and another program like it for undergraduates, called Accelerated Development of Aging Researchers, got top scores from federal reviewers, according to Champagne. Both were discontinued as part of the Trump administration’s nationwide termination of similar programs.
Since January, the Trump administration has targeted for elimination programs at NIH and other agencies that promote diversity in the sciences. The NIH termination email for one of the UC Davis programs noted that “Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.” Champagne said she found the language “pretty shocking. We know that’s not true,” she said.
Destabilizing a system
Sacramento State was hit with a similar cut, according to an NIH list of terminated grants. The school’s $1.3 million Undergraduate Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement, or U-RISE, prepared students from underrepresented backgrounds — those with disabilities or from low-income families, first generation, and Black and Latino students — for doctoral programs in biomedical research. People who are Black or Hispanic or have disabilities have long been underrepresented in STEM fields.
The program paid them to do independent research under faculty supervision, covered the cost of symposiums and workshops, and helped them apply for grants and graduate programs. Since 2017, 23 of the 32 U-RISE students went on to enroll in graduate programs, according to the university. A school spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Area economic leaders see trouble ahead because of the cuts. The loss of physician-researchers coming out of universities will be a big blow to the region’s and the country’s economy, aside from halting progress on research on dementia, Parkinson’s and other diseases, said Barry Broome, president and CEO of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council.
“Venture capital will slow. Financing for the industry will slow. Taking companies public will slow,” Broome said. “We’ve built an entire economy around UC Davis.” The scientific teams that are being destabilized can’t be put back together even if the cuts are reversed in a year or two, he adds.
Tiana and Emily may not wait around to find out whether that happens. Emily is considering applying for grad school in Austria, known for its neuro-immune research.
Tiana is thinking about Canadian programs. “It feels very, very strange to even consider leaving,” she said of herself and fellow College of Biological Sciences classmates talking of pursuing graduate degrees elsewhere. “But we’re at that point with how determined we are to go into STEM.”
This story is part of the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Hmong Daily News, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer. Support stories like these here, and sign up for our monthly newsletter.