Photo: From livestream of 10-30-25 DRIVE public hearing
Speaking before the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies at the Massachusetts State House on Thursday, Oct. 30, UMass Chan Medical School Chancellor Michael F. Collins testified in favor of Gov. Maura Healey’s Discovery, Research and Innovation for a Vibrant Economy (DRIVE) legislation, saying it would allow the Medical School’s world-class faculty to continue lifesaving research programs that have been threatened by federal funding cuts and uncertainty.
“Our research community is made up of the brightest scientific minds in the world and they are losing hope. Their patients are losing hope. Research brings hope to the human condition,” said Chancellor Collins. “This legislation will be a lifesaver for the lifesaving research our faculty members are pursuing.”
Gov. Healey introduced the $400 million DRIVE initiative to grow the commonwealth’s research and innovation economy and create thousands of new jobs. Massachusetts business, labor, health care and university leaders testified in support of the bill.
"I believe that passing the DRIVE act is essential to our state’s economic future, starting now,” Healey testified. “That’s because Massachusetts and our economy depend on research and innovation.”
With this bill, $200 million would be placed in a public higher education bridge funding reserve, funded by Fair Share surtax revenue, to provide Massachusetts public higher education campuses support for direct and indirect costs of research, cross-regional partnerships and joint ventures. It would support the University of Massachusetts system, including the Medical School, retain world-class talent, preserve and create jobs, and support a key foundation of the Massachusetts economy.
“Over the last 30 years, UMass has become a world class research university, and we have made significant investments over time in labs, in research faculty and bringing in the best folks that we can get,” testified UMass President Marty Meehan. “We’ve built an infrastructure, and with this legislation we’re hoping to do is provide a bridge to get us through a very difficult time.”
The UMass system attracts $869 million in research funding annually with UMass Chan accounting for $350 million of that total. In a typical year, 80 percent of the Medical School’s research funding comes from federal sources, the largest of which is the National Institutes of Health. These funds are now in jeopardy due to federal funding cuts and delays implemented by the current administration.
UMass Chan, for instance, currently has 55 grant submissions that have gone through study section and received scores at levels historically funded by the NIH. These grant submissions total more than $34 million in first-year funding and would bring in more than $171 million over the life of those grants. These applications remain delayed for unknown reasons and the ongoing shutdown means that any award notices will continue to be unfunded, explained Meehan.
In addition to those fundable grant submissions, the Medical School has another 284 grant applications that have been formally submitted but have yet to be reviewed. Those applications total more than $140 million in first year funds and more than $635 million over the life of the grants.
Because of these funding interruptions and the incredible uncertainty that pervades biomedical research, UMass Chan has been forced to revise its research budget downward from $415 million to $331 million this fiscal year, according to Collins. As a result, hundreds of valuable employees have been laid off, the number of applicants admitted to this year’s biomedical sciences PhD program was reduced, departments have been forced to make across-the-board cuts, and a freeze in discretionary spending was instituted.
Collins expressed concern for the junior faculty who have come to UMass Chan because of its world-class research enterprise and now face an uncertain future.
“We make an investment in the young people, and we’ve had to back some of that investment out,” said Collins. “This investment would allow us to reinstate those investments again on an individual-by-individual basis.”
Collins cited one example of a faculty member whose grants are being held up in the NIH and is at risk of losing postdoctoral fellows in the lab. Without that funding, the Medical School risks losing a promising junior faculty member who will be part of the next generation of great scientists to another university or industry.
“We don’t want that to happen,” said Collins. “If we get the green light, if this money is coming, then we can use some of our resources while we’re waiting for the money. But if we don’t get that green light, we’re going to lose people, and it will be a generation of loss.”
