Research funding is the catalyst for discoveries like vaccines or the Human Genome Project — a map of our genetic makeup curated here at UC Santa Cruz.

In 2025, the Trump administration slashed roughly $3 billion in scientific research funding by canceling grants. Renowned establishments such as the National Institute of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) experience instability as the crackdown on science continued.

The initial hit caused the NIH to shut down its social sciences division and give out an unusually small number of research grants. The administration’s goals for the 2027 fiscal year include even more budget cuts for the NIH and NSF.

California saw two measures introduced this year to combat these federal cuts targeting scientific research.

Senate Bill 895 (SB 895), or the California Science and Health Research Bond Act, passed unanimously in the Senate this past August. California voters will decide on the bill in the March 2028 primary election. SB 895 would authorize bonds worth $7.4 billion for biomedical, behavioral science and climate health research. It would also establish the California Foundation for Science and Health Research, which would give out grants across the state. The foundation would utilize of a public forum where people can comment on the priorities of proposed projects.

Proposition 38 is another bond designed to generate funding for immunology research, and will be on the ballot for the upcoming 2026 midterms. The bond is set at $8.4 billion, and half of the money is designated for California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, a UC-affiliated research center. The other half would go toward public universities and nonprofits.

The co-founder of the aforementioned institute, Gary Michelson, is the same individual who introduced the proposition to the ballot and is its biggest financial contributor.

The campaign for Proposition 38’s passage has been a rocky one.

“If you look a bit deeper, the first and foremost glaring concern is that $4.2 billion of the proposition funds goes to one single entity as written into the proposition language,” said Calvin Yang, a research assistant at California Health Policy Strategies, a healthcare-policy consulting firm based in Sacramento.

This distribution of funds between the UCs is managed by a board of representatives from all UCs with the exception of UCSC, UC Santa Barbara and UC Merced. Without representation, there will be no funds devoted to the universities.

Although UCSC is not represented on the board, Proposition 38 would borrow money from the California General Fund, which is the same source of funding for healthcare, food and education programs. The UCs received about $5 billion total from the General Fund for the 2026-27 academic year.

At UCSC, research is a large draw to the university, an aspect that has been greatly impacted by the federal administration.

“Our [lab] group had planned to attend presentations and to present our work at an off-campus location, but these plans have been put on hold,” said Shannon Findley, a fourth-year applied mathematics student working in a cellular mobility lab on campus.

Findley added that federal funding cuts prevented them from doing research over the summer due to a lack of compensation for researchers, causing them to miss out on the opportunity altogether.

Such is the case for many universities across the nation.

“Research is great, it is driving innovation in the state of California, in our country, in our world. When funding is being allocated, we want to make sure it’s fair, accessible and equitable,” Calvin Yang said.