Risking Scientific Extinction

Welcome back to this person I met! My name is Kayla, and I'm the host of this podcast. The voice you just heard is professor Allen Liu from the University of Michigan. As you may have heard from the news, the scientific pipeline is facing a major crisis. Since January, the federal government has terminated over 1600 active research grants, worth roughly 1.5 billion, proposing a 37% cut to the National institute of health and a 56% cut to the National Science Foundation. But, what do these numbers mean? To professor Liu, whose life has been built upon science, the numbers spell out a massive change for STEM. The future of research, determined by Liu, is uncertain. In this episode, he explains the numbers and their potential impact on generations of scientists to come, and raises the question of what really is at stake when you neglect the scientific pipeline.