>> Professors and researchers at Chicago area.

Universities say federal funding cuts are leaving research projects unfinished.

The Trump administration is freezing 790 million dollars for Northwestern University putting over 100 projects on pause, research funding from the CDC and National Institutes of Health are also at risk.

Joining us to discuss the local impact.

Our Danielle Toman are sick and engineering professor at Northwestern University.

Linda forced a doctor and health professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago and Julius Lucks and engineering professor at Northwestern University.

Thanks to the 3 of you for joining us.

So all 3 of you have had your research you know, or projects in limbo or to stop altogether because of these funding cuts.

First, Daniel, over to you.

Tell us more about what the stop work orders mean.

>> So for us, it means that we had to pause a couple of weeks ago.

Some of the projects in our lab towards developing dynamic camouflaged to developing some water Tess, which Julius we'll talk about as well where collaborators and to stopping some of our work towards developing wearable electronics for the future.

And so it meant, you know, moving the students on those projects to other projects, very abruptly.

And helping them try to still finish their dissertation research.

So I'm not really devastating and getting up to speed on a new project and I'm sure all of that took some time.

>> Julius, let's what is the local impact of university research?

What does what does it mean when but research stops?

Yeah, I think that's a great question.

And really important for the public to understand when they see 790 million dollars, northwestern cuts.

What does that mean?

What it means?

The individual research projects have to stop it.

Daniel said in our case we were developing a test for clean water, something that somebody could use in their own home to figure out if their water was contaminated with lead.

That would that work stops.

That means we can't continue to develop that technology and people are going not know if the water safe to drink and we'll have that opportunity to use that tests solidified out of Dr Force your grant from the CDC could be put on pause.

It sounds like there.

It's still some uncertainty there.

>> What about your grad students and your staff in the labs when something like that happens?

What is the impact?

Yeah, I just want to point out that this is the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health that lives in the CDC.

>> 80% of that workforce was rift as they like to say enforced.

Right.

And my my unit UIC School of Public Health is environmental and Occupational Health Sciences.

So all the work that we have, 24 million dollars in grants from Nyah, ash and what we need to do is protect the nation's workforce.

So we do research.

It's very applied.

Public health research.

We.

Evaluate injuries and illnesses that workers experience.

We do public health surveillance counting the injuries and illnesses in the state of Illinois for the state of Illinois.

And so stopping.

This is really harming the workforce.

Our research is very applied to protecting the workforce, which is precious resource and the state.

So it's harmful for all of us who have jobs, right?

Like the work force itself I imagined then the folks who work in your lab.

>> And the grad students who are learning in your lab.

But yeah, what what are they dealing with right now with this uncertainty for the yeah, right.

some of them are trying to graduates.

I have 10 students and a center for agricultural safety and health that I support.

If this funding goes away, they no longer get supported.

They may be can't finish their degrees.

They can't be in the field doing the research that they need to do to >> complete their degrees.

Many of them are in the middle my colleagues are are working in a training program so they have dozens of students who are training and medicine, occupational medicine, work related health problems in nursing in industrial hygiene and occupational safety.

All of those careers are dependent completely dependent on.

I asked is the only funder of that kind of research.

And so all the practitioners that are keeping workers safe and workplace the next Gen, the pipeline, 2 people that will be able continue to do that work is being time.

It's being held up.

Absolutely.

Daniel Daniel, sorry.

This research also be very expensive.

>> Give us a sense of, you know what expenses the federal funds cover for you all.

The major expenses are one to cover the time of the researchers in the lab.

And that is a huge expense that is their jobs.

>> And the second major expenses, all of the equipment that we use requires expensive free agents and materials and supplies to run these experiments and and that's also gone.

And so even if we are finding a way to keep those people on new projects, it's not towards what we intended and we no longer have the materials and supplies to do We have to be very creative about where their projects might go, that they can do something, not at the and computational, turn.

It will not be the same.

>> Northwestern has said in a statement, quote, the university after consultation with the board of Trustees will fund research that is subject to stop work orders or the federal funding freeze.

This report is intended to keep these projects going until we have a better understanding of the funding landscape.

Julius we know that Northwestern has a massive endowment.

Doesn't necessarily always mean that that money can just fill the gap.

But do you think the university's resources can make up for the federal grants being lost in the long term?

Yeah, it's a great question for people to understand.

In the end, the answer is no.

The U.S. government has for about 80 years has been pumping in money to universities as the engine of innovation in this country.

The system is built around that.

>> The government gives universities money the best and the brightest come up with the ideas and the ones that bubble to the top make it into the market place in our businesses.

Northwestern is going you know, I can't speak on behalf of the university, but I know that they're going to work hard to keep a scientist going.

But there's only so much you can do.

This is going to cause real impacts to us and across the nation.

If the system is built around university research and the government is there for funding it.

>> Is there another sector that could pick up that research?

Private sector nonprofit?

A lot of people you hearing this and, you know, people chattering will maybe research should be done at companies.

And certainly our companies in this country are wonderful.

But the companies can't take over the role of the university.

There's a lot of great reasons for that.

Companies have shorter time lines.

They can invest on those bitterly moon shot ideas that universities have traditionally done.

And also people, you know, wonder okay for the companies are doing this research.

Who were the researchers in the companies that do that?

Every researcher in a country company comes from the university.

So we have a research mission, but we also have a training mission.

Our students are not only doing the research, they're learning how to do the research and to be leaders and without universities, you lose all of that Dr Force.

you do lose this funding, for example, what what could happen?

I'm he takes about it thinking honestly, boy, we support us from 9 dash funding.

We support probably.

35 students in graduate programs.

If that funding goes away, really, we don't.

We don't have students in our in our programs.

We really we lose the pipeline number one, number 2, we learned that we lose the research projects that they're working on.

You don't you know, you can't train students to do research by talking to them in a classroom.

You have to get them out into the field.

They have to be working in laboratories.

They have to be collecting and analyzing data.

They have to be learning how to write reports and so on how to translate their research, communicate with communities and so on.

If we don't have this funding, we lose all of that expertise and all of those students lose their university opportunity.

Julius, we know that universities, many of the specially elite ones are facing several challenges.

Civil rights investigations, obviously national push regarding the protests last year.

What do you make of all of this?

>> Federal scrutiny of of higher education.

The thing I think I want to speak to most about that is these research cuts.

There's a lot going on.

And you know, the public, I think doesn't really completely understand all the different angles and >> universities have somehow lost their luster in the public imagination.

But I think it's really important to realize that these things that are happening his direct cuts are coming to individuals and research projects, all of the people that are at universities doing research are doing it for other people.

All of us at this table spend our days and nights thinking about how can we help others?

The students have come in dedicating essentially their lives to helping others and having all these funding cuts are really impacting not only things now, but well into our future.

Daniel, what could be next for your team in Western?

>> You know, for right now, we're looking for those stopgap solutions.

It won't be enough to to us earlier point to replace all of that funding.

The infrastructure.

But we're hoping that others do rise up and say, hey, this work is important and here's some money to keep it going so that we have, you know, the next computer in 20 years.

The next AI Revolution, whatever it might be starts now.

And so we really hope that that there will be other sources out there in the interim or that people rise up and say, hey, we do want our universities doing this research.

We understand there may be other problems there.

But let's keep that research funding going in the meantime, because it's too important to let that go.

Okay.

Best of luck to all of