Every year, Michigan’s most influential leaders gather on Mackinac Island during the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference to discuss critical issues shaping the state’s future. This year, Michigan State University hosted a panel of experts to underscore the vital role federal research funding plays in driving breakthroughs like improving pancreatic cancer survival rates and tackling major public health crises, including the Flint Water Crisis.

“Across Michigan’s four major research universities, federal funding powers $2 billion in research annually. It supports close to 25,000 jobs here in Michigan, generating more than $8.3 billion in total economic impact,” said MSU President Kevin M. Guskiewicz, Ph.D., in his opening remarks. “And in the process, we’re training the nation’s next generation of scientists and technologists. Over 42% of federally funded research staff at our Michigan research universities are students.”

Moderated by the Detroit News’ politics editor and columnist Chad Livengood, the panel brought together three leaders to discuss the critical juncture facing higher education research: Mona Hanna, renowned pediatrician, MSU associate dean for Public Health and C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health; Howard Crawford, senior scientist at Henry Ford Health and a pancreatic cancer researcher; and Matt Elliott, founder of Blue Lake Ideas and co-chair of MSU’s Green and White Council.

When Crawford started conducting pancreatic cancer research more than two decades ago, the five-year survival rate was 5%. Currently, the median survival time is only 10 months.

“Most patients, when first diagnosed, are told to get their affairs in order, and the thing that I always want to tell everyone is to get yourself to a university hospital because that’s where the second opinions are going to come from. That’s where the clinical trials are being conducted,” said Crawford.

Today, the five-year survival rate for those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer has improved to 13%. A key driver of that progress is research taking place at universities and because of university partnerships. Such research has critical impacts on survival rates and health outcomes and is done in partnership with the federal government because it likely does not meet the profitability requirements for private investment.

Hanna, most known for her pivotal role in the research exposing the Flint Water Crisis, echoed Crawford’s sentiments.

“The role of a university is we are there to work hand in hand with communities to promote the common good; to do the difficult work that nobody else wants to do; to do the trusted, credible work; to improve the situation of the populations that we’re privileged to work in,” said Hanna. “That work was based on research. It was science that helped protect the entire community.”

Cuts to research funding create ripple effects in a university’s ecosystem, stalling crucial work that has the potential to lead to breakthroughs in disease and cancer research.

“Pancreatic cancer research is reaching a renaissance period and, with more research, we could see cures over the next 10 years; but if we stop research now, even if it’s a six-month interruption, there’s going to be a huge delay in the progress that we’ve made over the past 40 years,” said Crawford.

Cuts and federal policy changes can also affect areas like public health; one such example is the Flint Registry, an initiative that monitors long-term impacts of the Flint Water Crisis, which includes over 20,000 people voluntarily enrolled. Despite being re-funded in 2025, the future of the program remains uncertain due to the elimination of the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

“This state of uncertainty is what is being felt in a lot of academia and a lot of grants,” Hanna said. “Will we continue? Will we not continue? Just having this uncertainty creates a pause in this work, and we often lose incredible talent, and it’s hard to move forward.”

Research taking place at the state’s universities drives Michigan forward. As co-chair of the Green and White Council, Elliott is helping lead a group of Michigan innovators and executives to support MSU in defining and launching a set of initiatives to help shape the state and nation’s workforce and economy.

“Every dollar that’s spent at one of the four institutions that make up the University Research Corridor, or URC, comes back to the state of Michigan fivefold,” said Elliott.

Elliott noted that federally funded research at universities is often taken for granted, despite it serving as “a key bedrock of our competitiveness.” He further pointed out that the 10 most valuable companies of the New York Stock Exchange today owe their success, in part, to technology originally developed at a university or by investments from the federal government.

“All of this started with an influx of talent that came from Western Europe at the beginning of World War II,” said Elliott. “And that is what built up a lot of our research universities in this country. That talent is now under threat or mobile.” Elliott explained that those conducting vital research will seek opportunity elsewhere, and our nation risks losing talent as a result of cuts to federal funding.

The European Union has recently approved a 500 million-euro fund to recruit talent as part of its new “Choose Europe for Science” campaign, mainly from the United States. The U.K. has a similar initiative launched by Britain’s Royal Society, which is the United Kingdom’s national academy of sciences.

“The continuity of research is really important because a dollar spent at the federal level today shows up in the economy roughly 12 years later,” Elliott said. “So, it’s important that we have this level of continuity and that we continue to fund this research at a high level. We need this to continue to be competitive in the world.”