What Federal Budget Cuts Mean for UC Santa Barbara’s Next Generation of Scientists 

When you ask a graduate student what they do, the answer rarely fits cleanly into a sentence.

They develop new cancer treatments. They study earthquakes beneath the ocean floor. They try to decode the chemistry of strokes, or invent better ways to understand deep space data that hasn’t even arrived yet. They chase knowledge we don’t have yet, not for the sake of a diploma, but to push humanity forward.

The Indy has been reaching out to grad students to understand how the current administration is impacting this work. Below are three snapshots of how the lives and studies of UCSB graduate students have undergone upheaval in the wake of budget cuts. 

Lisa Månsson: Breakthrough Cut Short

Lisa Månsson, a fifth-year PhD candidate in materials science at UCSB, was working on a project she hoped could lead to better treatments for glioblastoma — a devastating, fast-growing brain cancer. Then came the cuts.

“We basically found a protein that is heavily involved in the aggressive spread of this cancer in the brain,” said Månsson. “We want to keep on studying that protein. But my group got the funding cut — I’m cut short for the year, so I’m defending [my thesis] and leaving in two weeks.”

Månsson is one of roughly 500 graduate students at UCSB paid through federal research funds. That same pool also supports more than 160 postdoctoral researchers. Now, as federal budget cuts ripple through universities across the country, many students are watching their projects stall or vanish altogether.

“It’s crazy that they [the cuts] just happened, and now there is no money,” Månsson said, “and there is no plan for anyone to take over or continue the project.”

Månsson, who is originally from Sweden, says she’s moving back to Europe, specifically Germany. “The U.S. used to be a very attractive country for scientific progress. Now Germany’s getting the brain drain.”

Piyusha Lotlikar: Scaling Back Hope

“I think it’s just the … uncertainty,” said Piyusha Lotlikar, a fifth-year PhD student in chemistry and biochemistry. Her research focuses on metal-based drugs to treat stroke and heart attack.

“We don’t really function well when we don’t know what’s coming next. Usually, our PIs [Principle Investigators] budget time and money with the knowledge that we have this much money coming and anticipate publishing this much. But now … we don’t know whether we can be ambitious.”

Lotlikar says she’s had to “scale back my hopes and dreams.”

Part of that is due to her program relocating across the country. She stayed in Santa Barbara as an assistant specialist to finish her degree and her research in full. Now, her timeline has been shortened.

“I have to be done in the next year. If we work extra hard and don’t have a life, it’s possible. You want this, so you make it work. But at what point is that too much to ask?”

Keneni Godana: Changed Trajectory

“I’m in structural seismology, mostly in the oceans,” said Keneni Godana, a fourth-year PhD student in earth sciences. Her work involves studying how Earth’s crust developed.

But her fieldwork was canceled. Her thesis was reorganized. The data she needed won’t be collected.

“Instead of being an expert in the geologic setting that I came to UC Santa Barbara to learn, I’m working on something else,” Godana said. “The limiting factor is that I have to use data that’s already collected.”

She said programs that supported diversity in science, like the AGU Bridge, were also on the chopping block. “I just got an email today saying the funding for that program has been entirely cut.”

‘The Dominoes Start to Fall’

Each student described a lack of transparency from above.

“We don’t know who to contact or who’s still there,” said Godana.

Lotlikar echoed that: “There’s a lot of grant officers who have been fired. We just submitted a progress report, but I’m not quite sure who that went to.”

Månsson added: “There’s so much uncertainty everywhere.”

The impact isn’t limited to UCSB. It’s a national shift. Students described peers whose job offers were revoked, who lost positions meant to analyze billion-dollar space data, who are now unsure whether they can finish what they started.

“I think it’s a little bit shortsighted on the part of the administration to assume that simply cutting the money means that they’re saving something,” said Lotlikar. “You’ve cut thousands of jobs … people that contributed to economic growth. It doesn’t look good.”

Godana pointed to the bigger picture. “With things that require global solutions … the rest of the world hears it loud and clear when the U.S. steps back so strongly.”

“You start by impacting one group of people,” said Lotlikar. “Then the dominoes start to fall.”

That sentiment was shared by all three students, who noted how targeted some of the cuts seemed — particularly to research aligned with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion).

“It’s embarrassing on a global front that the U.S.’s priority right now is no longer to invest in the future,” said Godana.