U.S. scientists warn that Trump’s cuts will set off brain drain

Ardem Patapoutian’s story is not just the American dream, it is the dream of American science.

He arrived in Los Angeles in 1986 at age 18 after fleeing war-torn Lebanon. He spent a year writing for an Armenian newspaper and delivering Domino’s at night to become eligible for the University of California, where he earned his undergraduate degree and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience.

He started a lab at Scripps Research in San Diego with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, discovered the way humans sense touch and in 2021 won the Nobel Prize.

But with the Trump administration slashing spending on science, Patapoutian’s federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain has been frozen. In late February, he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedica