“Having Continuity in Funding Is Important”

The federal government has terminated numerous federally funded grants and contracts to Harvard and is scaling back investments in scientific and medical research across the country. In this series, Harvard Medical School scientists discuss how these actions are affecting their research and their labs.

Dragana Rogulja’s lab is at the forefront of research linking lack of sleep with damage in the gut. Her federal research grants have been terminated by the government.

Rogulja, an associate professor of neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS, emphasizes the importance of continuity in funding scientific research and the resources wasted when the government cuts funding in the middle of a study.

“Many types of experiments that we do are not things that you could just put on a shelf and pick up again. We would have to start again,” she says. “It’s wasteful in many, many dimensions. Money, people’s time, everything.” Learn more about Rogulja’s research in the video below.