In September 2025, the National Institute of Standards and Technology ended a program that had supported Boston University climate scientist Lucy Hutyra’s work for more than a decade. Hutyra and colleagues removed field sensors and other equipment, and her lab’s graduate student roster has fallen from 13 to four. She said she will not take on new doctoral students this year or next.

The equipment remains boxed in a corner of her lab as she hopes to resume the research. “I can’t bear to take everything apart,” Hutyra said.

The governor’s office estimates Massachusetts has lost as much as $2.6 billion in federal National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation funding under the Trump administration. State officials also say federal cuts have affected more than a dozen clinical trials in Massachusetts, with consequences for thousands of patients. The state’s concentration of research universities, technology companies and academic medical centers makes it particularly exposed to changes in federal science spending, said Gretchen Goldman, head of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Universities have also reported budget effects. MIT said it lost 20% of its federal funding and reduced graduate enrollment by about 20% this year, or roughly 500 students. Boston University announced $50 million in budget reductions and layoffs for fiscal year 2026 amid federal funding uncertainty.

At UMass Lowell, doctoral candidate Daniel Rourke said the Department of Energy eliminated a program that had supplied much of his battery-storage lab’s funding. He expects to finish his degree in 2027, but said the lab currently lacks money to bring in new students. Rourke also pointed to visa restrictions and anti-immigrant rhetoric as obstacles for a university where more than half of doctoral students are international.

The Trump administration says it is cutting waste and fraud while redirecting research investment to priorities such as artificial intelligence, advanced nuclear power and quantum computing. President Donald Trump has described the changes as an effort to support what he calls the “gold standard” of science. Researchers acknowledge that administrations have long shifted research priorities, but say abrupt grant cancellations, delayed payments and limits on some fields have created unusual instability.

That uncertainty could affect the next generation of researchers, said Glorian Sorensen, a professor emerita at Harvard’s public health school. MIT doctoral candidate Kristen Ammons, who studies ecosystem recovery using satellite data, said federal cuts have made a potential career at NASA or another agency seem less attainable.

The November midterms could change the balance of power in Congress, now controlled by Republicans. Some scientists hope a new Congress would restore funding and press federal agencies to release stalled grants. Congress has already pushed back on some proposed science cuts, though reversing disruptions and rebuilding research programs could take time.

Massachusetts Democrats Katherine Clark and Jim McGovern say a Democratic majority would use Congress’s budget and oversight powers to challenge the administration’s approach. Clark warned at a town hall in Arlington that continued cuts could cause “generational harm.” McGovern, whose daughter benefited from a clinical trial before dying of a rare cancer, said research funding has direct consequences for patients as well as universities.

For researchers whose projects have already been dismantled, however, the election is only one part of a longer recovery. “We’ve seen a lot of money pulled out of our research economy,” said state Economic Development Secretary Eric Paley, calling the trend a major concern for Massachusetts.