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Boston Herald
Boston Herald
17 Apr 2025
Rick Sobey


NextImg:Massachusetts medical school lays off, furloughs 200 workers amid NIH funding cuts

UMass Chan Medical School has laid off or furloughed 200 employees, as the campus grapples with cuts to NIH research and federal funding uncertainty.

The medical school, which received $193 million in National Institutes of Health funding last year, is now reportedly facing a $30 million shortfall in NIH funding due to long delays in funding new grants since the Trump administration took over.

UMass Chan as a result of the shortfall and uncertainty has laid off or furloughed 200 workers.

Also, the incoming Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences class was significantly reduced, faculty recruitment has been paused, and all hiring and discretionary spending has been frozen.

The Herald previously reported that UMass Chan had rescinded provisional admission offers to several dozen PhD applicants to the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences for this upcoming fall.

“Research brings hope to the human condition, and it is shocking to an academic community like ours that research would be attacked, particularly by folks who believe that America should be the best,” UMass Chan Medical School Chancellor Michael Collins said during an event with Gov. Maura Healey earlier this week.

The governor visited UMass Chan to highlight the negative impacts of Trump’s cuts to NIH funding. Healey met with senior leaders and researchers about how NIH cuts hurt their lifesaving work in advancing gene therapy, rare disease research, digital medicine and neuroscience.

The governor toured the Paul J. DiMare Center, the new education and research building that will help expand neurodegenerative and genetic diseases research, including ALS.

“We need to make clear what’s at stake here,” Healey said. “The funding cuts are very extensive, including supporting critical work in gene therapy, rare disease research, HIV research, digital medicine, neuroscience and more. UMass Chan has held groundbreaking clinical trials of new genetic therapies for devastating conditions like ALS and so many other diseases. But this kind of progress is now at risk, and with that, hope is being stripped away from patients and families.”

“These are cuts to science, cuts to research and cuts that will be irretrievable if something isn’t done to reverse them,” the governor said.

More than half of UMass Chan’s 1,400 students practice in Massachusetts after graduation. With more than 6,000 employees, the school one of the largest employers in Central Massachusetts and an important anchor of the region’s life sciences ecosystem — creating more than $2 billion in total annual economic impact.

Last month, UMass Chan rescinded the provisional admission offers to several dozen PhD applicants. The med school at the time cited the uncertainty at the federal level as the Trump administration implements widespread cuts.

Officials noted that the federal proposal to cut and cap indirect NIH rates would result in an annual loss of $40 to $50 million that UMass Chan relies upon to support its biomedical research programs.

Chancellor Michael Collins (Chris Christo/Boston Herald, File)

Herald file photo
Chancellor Michael Collins (Chris Christo/Boston Herald, File)