IRIS is featured in new reporting from The Chronicle of Higher Education. “The Billion-Dollar Ripple Effect” explores how the Trump administration’s research funding cuts extend beyond campuses and are now being felt by the businesses that depend on university contracts.
In an interview, IRIS Executive Director Jason Owen-Smith explained that rather than isolated, white-coated places, academic labs are hubs with spokes fanning outward and have “a meaningful impact that we don’t often talk about.” IRIS staff also worked with the article’s author, Karin Fischer, to surface examples of vendors whose work is intertwined with the scientific enterprise.
The article features perspectives from three Ann Arbor-area companies that say they are bracing for declining revenues as researchers facing funding uncertainty scale back purchases of essential resources like assay kits, chemicals, and even frogs.
The companies profiled — Xenopus I, Cayman Chemical, and Arbor Assays — were identified using aggregate data on research-related purchasing from IRIS member universities.