NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) looks set to lose a big proportion of its budget as a two-decade reorganization plan for the centre is being accelerated. The move, which is set to be complete by March, has left the Goddard campus with empty buildings and disillusioned employees. Some staff even fear that the actions during the 43-day US government shutdown, which ended on 12 November, could see the end of much of the centre’s activities.
Based in Greenbelt, Maryland, the GSFC has almost 10 000 scientists and engineers, about 7000 of whom are directly employed by NASA contractors. Responsible for many of NASA’s most important uncrewed missions, telescopes, and probes, the centre is currently working on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2027, as well as the Dragonfly mission that is due to head for Saturn’s largest moon Titan in 2028.
The ability to meet those schedules has now been put in doubt by the Trump administration’s proposed budget for financial year 2026, which started in September. It calls for NASA to receive almost $19bn – far less than the $25bn it has received for the past two years. If passed, Goddard would lose more than 42% of its staff.
Congress, which passes the final budget, is not planning to cut NASA so deeply as it prepares its 2026 budget proposal. But on 24 September, Goddard managers began what they told employees was “a series of moves…that will reduce our footprint into fewer buildings”. The shift is intended to “bring down overall operating costs while maintaining the critical facilities we need for our core capabilities of the future”.
While this is part of a 20-year “master plan” for the GSFC that NASA’s leadership approved in 2019, the management’s memo stated that “all planned moves will take place over the next several months and be completed by March 2026″. A report in September by Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which is responsible for NASA, asserts that the cuts are “in clear violation of the [US] constitution [without] regard for the impacts on NASA’s science missions and workforce”.
On 3 November, the Goddard Engineers, Scientists and Technicians Association, a union representing NASA workers, reported that the GSFC had already closed over a third of its buildings, including some 100 labs. This had been done, it says, “with extreme haste and with no transparent strategy or benefit to NASA or the nation”. The union adds that the “closures are being justified as cost-saving but no details are being provided and any short-term savings are unlikely to offset a full account of moving costs and the reduced ability to complete NASA missions”.
Accounting for the damage
Zoe Lofgren, the lead Democrat on the House of Representatives Science Committee, has demanded of Sean Duffy, NASA’s acting administrator, that the agency “must now halt” any laboratory, facility and building closure and relocation activities at Goddard. In a letter to Duffy dated 10 November, she also calls for the “relocation, disposal, excessing, or repurposing of any specialized equipment or mission-related activities, hardware and systems” to also end immediately.
Lofgren now wants NASA to carry out a “full accounting of the damage inflicted on Goddard thus far” by 18 November. Owing to the government shutdown, no GSFC or NASA official was available to respond to Physics World’s requests for a response.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has renominated billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman as NASA’s administrator. Trump had originally nominated Isaacman, who had flown on a private SpaceX mission and carried out spacewalk, on the recommendation of SpaceX founder Elon Musk. But the administration withdrew the nomination in May following concerns among some Republicans that Isaacman had funded the Democrat party.
In the intense first few months of his second US presidency, Donald Trump has been enacting his old campaign promise with a vengeance. He’s ridding all the muck from the American federal bureaucracy, he claims, and finally bringing it back under control.
Scientific projects and institutions are particular targets of his, with one recent casualty being the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP). Outsiders might shrug their shoulders at a panel of scientists being axed. Panels come and go. Also, any development in Washington these days is accompanied by confusion, uncertainty, and the possibility of reversal.
But HEPAP’s dissolution is different. Set up in 1967, it’s been a valuable and long-standing advisory committee of the Office of Science at the US Department of Energy (DOE). HEPAP has a distinguished track record of developing, supporting and reviewing high-energy physics programmes, setting priorities and balancing different areas. Many scientists are horrified by its axing.
The terminator
Since taking office in January 2025, Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders – presidential decrees that do not need Congressional approval, legislative review or public debate. One order, which he signed in February, was entitled “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy”.
It sought to reduce parts of the government “that the President has determined are unnecessary”, seeking to eliminate “waste and abuse, reduce inflation, and promote American freedom and innovation”. While supporters see those as laudable goals, opponents believe the order is driving a stake into the heart of US science.
Hugely valuable, long-standing scientific advisory committees have been axed at key federal agencies, including NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US Geological Service, the National Institute of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What’s more, the committees were terminated without warning or debate, eliminating load-bearing pillars of the US science infrastructure. It was, as the Columbia University sociologist Gil Eyal put it in a recent talk, the “Trump 2.0 Blitzkrieg”.
Then, on 30 September, Trump’s enablers took aim at advisory committees at the DOE Office of Science. According to the DOE’s website, a new Office of Science Advisory Committee (SCAC) will take over functions of the six former discretionary (non-legislatively mandated) Office of Science advisory committees.
“Any current charged responsibilities of these former committees will be transferred to the SCAC,” the website states matter-of-factly. The committee will provide “independent, consensus advice regarding complex scientific and technical issues” to the entire Office of Science. Its members will be appointed by under secretary for science Dario Gil – a political appointee.
Apart from HEPAP, others axed without warning were the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, the Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee, and the Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee.
Over the years, each committee served a different community and was represented by prominent research scientists who were closely in touch with other researchers. Each committee could therefore assemble the awareness of – and technical knowledge about – emerging promising initiatives and identify the less promising ones.
Many committee members only learned of the changes when they received letters or e-mails out of the blue informing them that their committee had been dissolved, that a new committee had replaced them, and that they were not on it. No explanation was given.
Closing HEPAP and the other Office of Science committees will hamper both the technical support and community input that it has relied on to promote the efficient, effective and robust growth of physics
Physicists whom I have spoken to are appalled for two main reasons. One is that closing HEPAP and the other Office of Science committees will hamper both the technical support and community input that it has relied on to promote the efficient, effective and robust growth of physics.
“Speaking just for high-energy physics, HEPAP gave feedback on the DOE and NSF funding strategies and priorities for the high-energy physics experiments,” says Kay Kinoshita from the University of Cincinnati, a former HEPAP member. “The panel system provided a conduit for information between the agencies and the community, so the community felt heard and the agencies were (mostly) aligned with the community consensus”.
As Kinoshita continued: “There are complex questions that each panel has to deal with. even within the topical area. It’s hard to see how a broader panel is going to make better strategic decisions, ‘better’ meaning in terms of scientific advancement. In terms of community buy-in I expect it will be worse.”
Other physicists cite a second reason for alarm. The elimination of the advisory committees spreads the expertise so thinly as to increase the likelihood of political pressure on decisions. “If you have one committee you are not going to get the right kind of fine detail,” says Michael Lubell, a physicist and science-policy expert at the City College of New York, who has sat in on meetings of most of the Office of Science advisory committees.
“You’ll get opinions from people outside that area and you won’t be able to get information that you need as a policy maker to decide how the resources are to be allocated,” he adds. “A condensed-matter physicist for example, would probably have insufficient knowledge to advise DOE on particle physics. Instead, new committee members would be expected to vet programs based on ideological conformity to what the Administration wants.”
The critical point
At the end of the Second World War, the US began to construct an ambitious long-range plan to promote science that began with the establishment of the National Science Foundation in 1950 and developed and extended ever since. The plan aimed to incorporate both the ability of elected politicians to direct science towards social needs and the independence of scientists to explore what is possible.
US presidents have, of course, had pet scientific projects: the War on Cancer (Nixon), the Moon Shot (Kennedy), promoting renewable energy (Carter), to mention a few. But it is one thing for a president to set science to producing a socially desirable product and another to manipulate the scientific process itself.
“This is another sad day for American science,” says Lubell. “If I were a young person just embarking on a career, I would get the hell out of the country. I would not want to waste the most creative years of my life waiting for things to turn around, if they ever do. What a way to destroy a legacy!”
The end of HEPAP is not draining a swamp but creating one.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is to lay off some 550 employees as part of a restructuring that began in July. The action affects about 11% of JPL’s employees and represents the lab’s third downsizing in the past 20 months. When the layoffs are complete by the end of the year, the lab will have roughly 4500 employees, down from about 6500 at the start of 2024. A further 4000 employees have already left NASA during the past six months via sacking, retirement or voluntary buyouts.
Managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, JPL oversees scientific missions such as the Psyche asteroid probe, the Europa Clipper and the Perseverance rover on Mars. The lab also operates the Deep Space Network that keeps Earth in communication with unmanned space missions. JPL bosses already laid off about 530 staff – and 140 contractors – in February last year followed by another 325 people in November 2024.
JPL director Dave Gallagher insists, however, that the new layoffs are not related to the current US government shutdown that began on 1 October. “[They are] essential to securing JPL’s future by creating a leaner infrastructure, focusing on our core technical capabilities, maintaining fiscal discipline, and positioning us to compete in the evolving space ecosystem,” he says in a message to employees.
Judy Chu, Democratic Congresswoman for the constituency that includes JPL, is less optimistic. “Every layoff devastates the highly skilled and uniquely talented workforce that has made these accomplishments possible,” she says. “Together with last year’s layoffs, this will result in an untold loss of scientific knowledge and expertise that threatens the very future of American leadership in space exploration and scientific discovery.”
John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University and founder of the university’s Space Policy Institute, says that the cuts are a direct result of the Trump administration’s approach to science and technology. “The administration gives low priority to robotic science and exploration, and has made draconic cuts to the science budget; that budget supports JPL’s work,” he told Physics World. “With these cuts, there is not enough money to support a JPL workforce sized for more ambitious activities. Ergo, staff cuts.”
Almost 60 US scientific societies have signed a letter calling on the US government to “safeguard the integrity” of the peer-review process when distributing grants. The move is in to response to an executive order issued by the Trump administration in August that places accountability for reviewing and awarding new government grants in the hands of agency heads.
The executive order – Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking – calls on each agency head to “designate a senior appointee” to review new funding announcements and to “review discretionary grants to ensure that they are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest.”
The order outlines several previous grants that it says have not aligned with the Trump administration’s current policies, claiming that in 2024 more than a quarter of new National Science Foundation (NSF) grants went to diversity, equity, and inclusion and what it calls “other far-left initiatives”.
“These NSF grants included those to educators that promoted Marxism, class warfare propaganda, and other anti-American ideologies in the classroom, masked as rigorous and thoughtful investigation,” the order states. “There is a strong need to strengthen oversight and coordination of, and to streamline, agency grantmaking to address these problems, prevent them from recurring, and ensure greater accountability for use of public funds more broadly.”
Increasing burdens
In response, the 58 agencies – including the American Physical Society, the American Astronomical Society, the Biophysical Society, the American Geophysical Union and SPIE – have written to the majority and minority leaders of the US Senate and House of Representatives, to voice their concerns that the order “raises the possibility of politicization” in federally funded research.
“Our nation’s federal grantmaking ecosystem serves as the gold standard for supporting cutting-edge research and driving technological innovation worldwide,” the letters states. “Without the oversight traditionally applied by appropriators and committees of jurisdiction, this [order] will significantly increase administrative burdens on both researchers and agencies, slowing, and sometimes stopping altogether, vital scientific research that our country needs.”
The letter says more review and oversight is required by the US Congress before the order should go into effect, adding that the scientific community “is eager” to work with congress and the Trump administration “to strengthen our scientific enterprise”.
When we started our PhDs in physics at Imperial College London, our paths seemed conventional: a lot of lab work, conferences and a bit of teaching on the side. What we did not expect was that within a couple of years we would be talking with MPs in the House of Commons, civil servants in Whitehall and business leaders in industry. We found ourselves contributing to policy reports and organizing roundtable discussions alongside policy-makers, scientists and investors; focusing on quantum technology and its impact on the economy and society.
Our journey into science policy engagement started almost by chance. Back in 2022 we received an e-mail from Imperial‘s Centre for Quantum Engineering Science and Technology (QuEST) advertising positions for PhD students to support evidence-based policy-making. Seeing it as an opportunity to contribute beyond the lab, we both took up the challenge. It became an integral part of our PhD experience. What started as a part-time role alongside our PhDs turned into something much more than that.
Mixing PhDs and policy
Getting involved From left: Dimitrie Cielecki, Elizabeth Pasatembou and Michael Ho in the UK Houses of Parliament. (Courtesy: Craig Whittall)
Her interest in science policy engagement started out of curiosity and the desire to make a more immediate impact during her PhD. “Research can feel slow,” she says. “Taking up this role and getting involved in policy gave me the chance to use my expertise in a way that felt directly relevant, and develop new skills along the way. I also saw this as an opportunity to challenge myself and try something new.”
Pasatembou also worked on a collaborative project between the Imperial Deep Tech Entrepreneurship and QuEST, conducting interviews with investors to inform the design of a tailored curriculum on quantum technologies for the investors community.
Dimitrie Cielecki
Dimitrie Cielecki joined Imperial’s Complex Nanophotonics group as a PhD candidate in 2021. The opportunity to work in science policy came at a time when his research was evolving in new directions. “The first year of my PhD was not straightforward, with my project taking unexpected, yet exciting, turns in the realm of photonics, but shifting away from quantum,” explains Cielecki, whose PhD topic was spatio-temporal light shaping for metamaterials.
After seeing an advert for a quantum-related policy fellowship, he decided to jump in. “I didn’t even know what supporting policy-making meant at that point,” he says. “But I quickly became driven by the idea that my actions and opinions could have a quick impact in this field.”
Cielecki is now a quantum innovation researcher at the Institute for Deep Tech Entrepreneurship in the Imperial Business School, where he is conducting research on the correlations between technical progress, investors’ confidence and commercial success in the emerging quantum sector.
We joined QuEST and the Imperial Policy Forum – the university’s policy engagement programme – in 2022 and were soon sitting at the table with leading voices in the nascent quantum technology field. We had many productive conversations with senior figures from most quantum technology start-ups in the UK. We also found ourselves talking to leaders of the National Quantum Technology Programme (including its chair, Sir Peter Knight); to civil servants from the Office for Quantum in the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT); and to members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Sometimes we would carry out tasks such as identifying the relevant stakeholders for an event or a roundtable discussion with policy implications. Other times we would do desk research and contribute to reports used in the policy-making process. For example, we responded to the House of Commons written evidence inquiry on Commercialising Quantum Technologies (2023) and provided analysis and insights for the Regulatory Horizons Council report Regulating Quantum Technology Applications (2024). We also moderated a day of roundtable discussions with quantum specialists for the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology’s briefing note Quantum Computing, Sensing and Communications (2025).
A two-way street
When studying science, we tend to think of it as a purely intellectual exercise, divorced from the real world. But we know that the field is applied to many areas of life, which is why countries, governments and institutions need policies to decide how science should be regulated, taught, governed and so on.
Science policy has two complimentary sides. First, it’s about how governments and institutions support and shape the practice of science through, for example, how funding is allocated. Second, science policy looks at how scientific knowledge informs and guides policy decisions in society, which also links to the increasingly important area of evidence-informed policy-making. These two dimensions are of course linked – science policy connects the science and its applications to regulation, economics, strategy and public value.
Quantum policy specifically focuses on the frameworks, strategies and regulations that shape how governments, industries and research institutions develop and deploy quantum technologies. Many countries have published national quantum strategies, which include technology roadmaps tied to government investments. These outline the infrastructure needed to speed up the adoption of quantum technology – such as facilities, supply chains and a skilled workforce.
In the UK, the National Quantum Technology Programme (NQTP) – a government-led initiative that brings together industry, academia and government – has pioneered the idea of co-ordinated national efforts for the development of quantum technologies. Set up in 2014, the programme has influenced other countries to adopt a similar approach. The NQTP has been immensely successful in bringing together different groups from both the public and private sectors to create a productive environment that advances quantum science and technology. Co-operation and communication have been at the core of this programme, which has led to the UK’s 10-year National Quantum Strategy. Launched in 2023, this details specific projects to help accelerate technological progress and make the country a leading quantum-enabled economy. But that won’t happen unless we have mechanisms to help translate science into innovation, resilient supply chains, industry-led standardization, stable regulatory frameworks and a trained workforce.
Up for discussion Quantum topics being debated as national policy include quantum cryptography and security. (Courtesy: iStock/wavebreakmedia)
Quantum technologies can bring benefits for national security, from advanced sensing to secure communications. But their dual-use nature also poses potential threats as the technology matures, particularly with the prospect of cryptographically relevant quantum computers – machines powerful enough to break encryption. To mitigate these risks in a complex geopolitical landscape, governments need tailored regulations, whether that’s preparing for the transition to post-quantum cryptography (making communication safe from powerful code-cracking quantum computers) or controlling exports of sensitive products that could compromise security.
Like artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, there are also ethical considerations to take into account when developing quantum technologies. In particular, we need policies to ensure transparency, inclusivity and equitable access. International organizations such as UNESCO and the World Economic Forum have already started integrating quantum into their policy agendas. But as quantum technology is such a rapidly evolving new field, we need to strike a balance between innovation and regulation. Too many rules can stifle innovation but, on the other hand, policy needs to keep up with innovation to avoid any future serious incidents.
Language barriers
Policy engagement involves collaborating with three sets of stakeholders – academia; industry and investors; and policy-makers. But as we started to work with these groups, we noticed each had a different way of communicating, creating a kind of language barrier. Scientists love throwing around equations, data and figures, often using highly technical terminology. Industry leaders and investors, on the other hand, talk in terms of how innovations could affect business performance and profitability, and what the risk for their investments could be. As for policy-makers, they focus more on how to distinguish between reality and hype, and look at budgets and regulations.
We found ourselves acting as cross-sector translators, seeking to bridge the gap between the three groups. We had to listen to each stakeholder’s requirements and understand what they needed to know. We then had to reframe technical insights and communicate them in a relevant and useful way – without simplifying the science. Once we grasped everyone’s needs and expectations, we offered relevant information, putting it into context for each group so everyone was on the same page.
To help us do this, we considered the stakeholders as “inventor”, “funder”, “innovator” or “regulator”. As quantum technology is such a rapidly growing sector, the groupings of academia, industry and policy-makers are so entangled that the roles are often blurred. This alternative framework helped us to identify the needs and objectives of the people we were working with and to effectively communicate our science or evidence-backed messages.
Finding the right people
During our time as policy fellows, we were lucky to have mentors to teach us how to navigate this quantum landscape. In terms of policy, Craig Whittall from the Imperial Policy Forum was our guide on protocol and policy scoping. We worked closely with QuEST management – Peter Haynes and Jess Wade – to organize discussions, collect evidence from researchers, generate policy leads, and formulate insights or recommendations. We also had the pleasure of working with other PhD students, including Michael Ho, Louis Chen and Victor Lovic, who shared the same passion for bridging quantum research and policy.
Having access to world-leading scientists and a large pool of early-career researchers spread across all departments and faculties, facilitated by the network in QuEST, made it easier for us to respond to policy inquiries. Early on, we mapped out what quantum-related research is going on at Imperial and created a database of the researchers involved. This helped inform the university’s strategy regarding quantum research, and let us identify who should contribute to the various calls for evidence by government or parliament offices.
Getting started Imperial College London encourages its researchers – established and early-career – to get involved in shaping policy. From left: Dimitrie Cielecki, Michael Ho, Louis Chen, Elizabeth Pasatembou. (Courtesy: Elizabeth Pasatembou)
PhD students are often treated as learners rather than contributors. But our experience showed that with the right support and guidance, early-career researchers (ECRs) such as ourselves can make real impact by offering fresh perspectives and expertise. We are the scientists, innovators or funders of the future so there is value in training people like us to understand the bigger picture as we embark on our careers.
To encourage young researchers to get involved in policy, QuEST and DSIT recently organized two policy workshops for ECR quantum tech specialists. Civil servants from the Office for Quantum explained their efforts and priorities, while we answered questions about our experience – the aim being to help ECRs to engage in policy-making, or choose it as a career option.
In April 2025 QuEST also launched an eight-week quantum primer for policy-makers. The course was modelled on a highly successful equivalent for AI, and looked to help policy-makers make more technically informed policy discussions. The first cohort welcomed civil servants from across government, and it was so highly reviewed a second course will be running from October 2025.
Our experience with QuEST has shown us the importance of scientists taking an active role in policy-making. With the quantum sector evolving at a formidable rate, it is vital that a framework is in place to take research from the lab to society. Scientists, industry, investors and policy-makers need to work together to create regulations and policies that will ensure the responsible use of quantum technologies that will benefit us all.
Connexion
