Natalia Quintana Parrilla loves being a science researcher. But the 24-year-old Oregon Health and Science University research assistant said the work is sometimes maddening.
“It’s very frustrating and you fail most of the time,” Parrilla said. “But those little moments, those eureka moments when you figure something out — that feeling is indescribable.”
Parrilla, who grew up and went to college in Puerto Rico, has always liked biology. And she has a knack for analyzing data. So obtaining a doctorate in science and going down a research path would be a sensible career option for her.
But getting started on that career is not always clear, especially for young people like Parrilla who may be unsure whether scientific research is right for them. That’s why she applied for Oregon Health and Science University’s Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program, or PREP.
The competitive, yearlong program acts as a bridge between undergraduate and graduate education. It’s designed to give college graduates with minimal lab experience a leg up in pursuing a career in biomedical science research.
Parrilla will complete the program this month.
“I’m a completely changed person,” Parrilla said about her year in PREP. “I feel more independent and confident about my decisions when it comes to my research and when it comes to what I want to do in my career.”
But Parrilla is among the last graduates of OHSU’s program.
PREP is federally funded by an agency under the purview of the National Institutes of Health. In April, all schools that had received PREP funding were notified that their grants had been terminated. The PREP grants appear to be part of a larger set of doctoral training programs that have been nixed by the NIH this year.
The termination comes as the Trump administration moves to eradicate any education initiatives that do not align with its priorities, including efforts intended to level the playing field for people from low-income or marginalized backgrounds.
Advocates of PREP say getting rid of these programs threatens U.S. scientific research innovation. It also shuts the door on career opportunities for young researchers.
Helping young researchers get a step up
For some, getting ahead in the scientific research world is a catch-22.
Those who choose to pursue a Ph.D. in science need a year or more of experience working in a research lab before being accepted into graduate level programs. But students not familiar with this often unspoken requirement are puzzled by how to advance their careers.
This was the case for Joselinne Medrano, a third-year OHSU graduate student who went through PREP four years ago.
“I remember cold-emailing doctors asking, ‘Can I shadow you?’” Medrano said about trying to catch up with peers who already had years of research experience. She was rejected multiple times.
Medrano, who says she has always been curious about science, grew up outside of Denver in a family that held blue collar jobs. Her mother is a housekeeper and Medrano describes her father as a jack-of-all-trades day laborer.
“I didn’t know that there were buildings full of labs for people just to do research. That was not a concept I had,” Medrano said. “But people who grew up in professional career households are aware of these things.”
And they usually know what steps to take and what connections need to be made to become a science researcher. PREP programs like the one at OHSU aimed to fill that knowledge gap for students.
“Our program is intended for people who want to do Ph.D. research in a biomedical area, but who didn’t really have much of a chance to do a lot of research during their undergraduate years,” Gary Westbrook, a senior scientist at OHSU’s Vollum Institute, said. He helped launch PREP at the university in 2018.
The program gives its scholars a year of hands-on research experience in a lab run by an OHSU scientist. Participants are also paired with an OHSU professor who acts as a mentor. In addition to the work experience, students get career preparation advice and help applying to graduate programs at research universities.
“If they don’t get that experience, they’re not going to be a scientist,” said Westbrook of the PREP graduates. “It’s not like we’re doing them a favor. We really want the broadest, smartest and most motivated people working in science.”
Most of the funds from the NIH grant go toward paying the PREP scholars a yearly stipend that equals out to about $55,000, including benefits, per student.
There’s a huge need for training programs like PREP that help transition students, Westbrook said. OHSU’s program gets over 100 applications per year. With the available resources, the program is only able to offer five positions a year.
But now with the grant termination, the very existence of PREP is in jeopardy.
Federal cuts to university research funding
Executive orders from the early days of the Trump administration directed federal agencies to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars.
The order that seemingly stopped funding to PREP and other training programs called on agencies to end “all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”
The NIH has been working to comply with the federal directives by eliminating grant programs and imposing a much smaller cap on reimbursement costs associated with research grants. Some of these moves are being challenged in court.
The cuts have hobbled research universities across the country. Some schools are anticipating massive budget shortfalls that could result in workforce and program reductions.
Oregon received over $388 million in NIH funding last year, according to federal data. More than 70% of that funding, $277 million, was awarded to OHSU.
Some graduate researchers at OHSU are concerned that these terminations will ultimately limit scientific research and lead to negative public health outcomes.
“These students are committed to eradicating diseases, helping vulnerable populations and advancing the frontiers of science,” said Yessica Santana Agreda, a fifth year Ph.D. candidate in OHSU’s neuroscience program. She is also a graduate of PREP.
“It makes no sense to take away these programs,” Agreda said. “It comes to a detriment, obviously, to the individual who is applying for the PREP program, but also to science as a whole.”
Bringing in young people with different backgrounds also benefits scientific research work, said former PREP scholar Tony Munoz.
“If you try to tackle problems by yourself or with people who all have a very similar way of thinking, then you’re not going to be able to answer questions in the best capacity,” Munoz said.
“When you introduce diversity into the equation, then you open up different ways of thinking that can help you solve that problem.”
Not giving up
Despite federal funding being cut off, organizers behind OHSU’s PREP say they won’t let it die.
More than 140 students have applied to be in the next cohort.
“There’s a real need there,” Westbrook said about the sheer number of applications for the training program. “Science is not a meritocracy.”
To keep the program alive, Westbrook and his colleagues are pulling all the funding levers at its disposal: requesting more university support, seeking private donations from local donors and using existing lab funds in lieu of grant money to pay for student stipends.
OHSU is covering the current cohort’s stipend until the end of their program year, which ends on June 30.
Parrilla is not certain what her future holds once the program is over. Graduate research positions are becoming even harder to come by this year as universities have cut back on graduate admissions and even rescinded offers due to financial uncertainty.
So far, Parrilla hasn’t had any offers come through. But she says she won’t give up.
She said her year in PREP has taught her to hold onto her values and dreams: to be a bona fide researcher with her own lab.
“I want to mentor people that have a similar background to mine, where they figured out that they wanted to do research late,” Parrilla said.
“And if possible, I would love to open a lab in Puerto Rico and give that chance to my community there.”