OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — Beyond the day to day medical work and education, there is a ton of critical research happening on the UNMC campus. It's research that depends on federal funding, a potential cut has researchers here, wondering.
- To do this work, infrastructure is everything.
- Grants from the National Institutes of Health fund the research but also the facilities that make it possible.
- A standard rate of 15% for indirect costs would mean UNMC stands to lose as much as $22 million in funding.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Doctor Rebekah Gundry works in this lab at UNMC.
"In our laboratory we can identify and quantify a broad range of biological molecules that are in the human body or in animal models," said Dr. Rebekah Gundry, director, UNMC Mass Spectrometry.
To do this work, infrastructure is everything.
Grants from the National Institutes of Health fund not only the research she performs but the logistics like lighting, heat, water, maintenance, renovations and more.
She's worried that if UNMC loses out on that money, in the short or long term, it will make it harder to perform the science that leads to breakthroughs.
"Overall, the research productivity will be less, we won't be able to make as many discoveries, we won't be able to train as many new scientists for that next generation," Gundry said.
“It affects our ability to conduct all types of research here on campus,” said Ken Bayles, vice chancellor for research at UNMC.
Bayles says UNMC stands to lose as much as $22 million in funding.
"Without that support, these innovations and developments will go away,” Bayles said.
Doctor Jeffrey Gold, president of the University of Nebraska system is looking at ways to cover the costs across the board.
"It will cost us this year approximately 27 million dollars, think of it like a 27-million-dollar budget cut that has to be made up somewhere,” Gold said.
He says this could mean cutting jobs and research support.
"If this facility isn't supported it means that we are not able provide that really important type research for those investigators," Gundry said.
Watching the White House, and now the courts as they try to plan for the future.
