Nationwide protests to protect scientific research from Trump administration policies are being co-organized by Occidental alum JP Flores ’21, according to a Feb. 18 article. Flores and four other scientists have organized 32 official rallies for Stand up for Science 2025, scheduled for noon March 7. Dozens of local events are also taking place, including a solidarity event at Wilshire Federal Building in Westwood.
According to Flores, a doctoral candidate in Bioinformatics & Computational Biology at UNC Chapel Hill, Occidental helped him find his passion for bridging science and society.
“It’s really important for the next generation of doctors and researchers to understand that science isn’t as objective as we think,” Flores said via text. “Our experiences as human beings influence the questions we ask, how we design experiments, how we interpret results and how we share our findings.”
Associate Professor of Biology Cheryl Okumura, Flores’ former academic advisor, said research is for the betterment of society.
“It’s a complicated system,” Okumura said. “It’s one of these things where you pull out one piece and the whole thing collapses. So, it’s not like you can just take a wrecking ball to the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and not have that have a lot of downstream consequences.”
In a Jan. 27 memo, the Trump administration temporarily paused the distribution of all federal financial assistance. The memo was rescinded Jan. 29, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Feb. 25 preventing federal funds from being frozen.
Okumura said the initial freeze prevented Occidental professors from reimbursing their research expenses.
In the 2025 fiscal year federal budget, $201.9 billion was allocated to scientific research and development according to a December 2024 Congressional Research Service report, with $51.3 billion allocated to the Department of Health and Human Services. The NIH receives nearly 97 percent of the Department of Health and Human Services’ research funds.
In fiscal year 2024, the NIH distributed more than $36.7 billion in total research funding, of which Okumura received more than $397,000 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an NIH institute, to research the immune system’s response to the bacteria that cause strep throat.
Roughly three-fourths of Okumura’s grant funded the direct costs of research, which she said includes researchers’ salaries, supplies and equipment. According to her, most of this money goes towards paying researchers, including students who participate in summer research and research funded by federal work study. She said professors can pay themselves through grants for the summer months when they are not compensated by the college.
One-fourth funded indirect costs, which are facility and administrative costs according to a Grants Policy Statement put out Feb. 7 by the NIH. In the statement, the NIH standardized the rate of indirect cost rate of new grants at 15 percent of the award. According to the statement, the indirect cost rate of NIH grants has historically averaged around 27 percent. On Feb. 21, a federal judge temporarily blocked the cuts until an injunction is issued.
According to Okumura, undergraduates have lost the ability to participate in Research Experiences for Undergraduates, or REUs, this summer because of funding uncertainty.
“All the [off-campus] summer research programs are being cancelled or on hold until they know about their funding situation,” Okumura said.
Okumura said summer research programs at Occidental have not been affected yet, but if the college does not receive more grants, they will be unable to support as many students. She said many graduating seniors have expressed concern about finding jobs.
“It’s going to be way harder to get jobs in not only academia, but also industry, because industry also relies on federal grants,” Okumura said. “Even just finding technician jobs is going to be a little bit more difficult, and then graduate school is really impacted because they 100 percent rely on those grants to pay grad students.”
Resident Assistant Professor of Public Health and Department Co-chair Jessica Dirkes pulled up the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) “Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report” web page in class and found a label at the top stating that “The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children.” According to Dirkes, the survey has a question about gender identity and another about sexual identity.
Dirkes said the use of the word “ideology” in the disclaimer is misguided.
“This is data, and what we have considered to be reliable, factual information” Dirkes said. “And I think that’s in jeopardy right now.”
According to Dirkes, resources like the youth survey data are used in her field to understand health outcomes and determine prevention strategies.
“When those resources are manipulated or politicized, which is what’s happening, it can have an impact for all of our health — for the health of the nation,” Dirkes said.
According to Flores, to use the scientific process as a tool to better society and human health, we need to educate ourselves on topics outside of STEM.
“Stand up for science and society,” Flores said via text.
Contact James Miller at jmiller4@oxy.edu
