Brian Donovan wins award after NSF cuts end career
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- Brian Donovan won the Genetics Society of America's Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education, announced at the end of February, though both his National Science Foundation grants had been terminated the previous April.
- The National Science Foundation cancelled both of Donovan's grants on a single day last April, determining they "no longer effectuate administration priorities" — leaving Donovan and his small team at the University of Colorado unemployed by the end of summer.
- Donovan's research, published in Science in February 2024, showed that genetics education grounded in the true complexities of human genetic variation could reduce students' susceptibility to biological essentialism and racial prejudice.
- Science education research grants accounted for 48% of all NSF terminations and 65% of total funding cuts under the Trump administration, according to a list of terminated awards released last summer.
- Donovan held a "soft money" position wholly dependent on grant renewals — an arrangement that made researchers like him the first casualties when the federal government broke its long-standing compact to honor research commitments.
- Donovan is now preparing to apply to nursing school, telling STAT that in the current political climate, his resume is "more of a liability than evidence of future promise."
- Jon Shemwell, a science education professor at the University of Alabama, called Donovan "a generational talent," while collaborator Andrei Cimpian of NYU said his ability to translate complex genetics into accessible, scientifically nuanced lessons for high schoolers was uniquely his.
Why it matters: A researcher who proved genetics education can reduce racial prejudice was honored with a lifetime-achievement award while simultaneously losing his career to federal funding cuts — with science education absorbing 48% of all NSF terminations. Donovan's forced pivot to nursing school illustrates how the Trump administration's NSF purge is pushing talented soft-money researchers out of science entirely, and his collaborators warn no one is positioned to replicate his interdisciplinary work.
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