Science advocates and UCLA Faculty Association members called on Californians to support a bill that would put scientific research funding on the 2026 ballot at a Saturday protest in Westwood.
About 40 protesters rallied outside the Wilshire Federal Building at noon Saturday for the second annual Stand Up For Science protest. Attendees listened to speeches from guests for the first hour before marching on the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Veteran Avenue at 1 p.m.
[Related: Over 1,000 people protest executive orders at Stand Up For Science rally Friday]
Stand Up For Science – a nonprofit advocacy group – organized protests in cities across the country Saturday, including in Washington, D.C., New York City and Chicago. The demonstrations are part of its campaign launched in February 2025 in response to threats to federal science agencies, research funding and public health infrastructure under the Trump administration.
SUFS organized the Los Angeles protest with the UCLA Faculty Association.
The federal government suspended $584 million of UCLA’s research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy in late July. While a federal judge temporarily reinstated the majority of the frozen grants in August and September, more than $230 million in research grants remain suspended as of Jan. 8, 2026, according to the UC Office of the President.
[Related: Federal government suspends research funding to UCLA]
Speakers called on attendees to support California Senate Bill 895, which would add a proposition to November 2026 to create the California Foundation for Science and Health Research. If passed, the foundation would distribute $23 billion – accumulated through the sale of state bonds – to scientific research projects.
[Related: UC sponsors state Senate bill that proposes $23 billion research bond]
Dave Farina, a science educator with 4.2 million YouTube subscribers and known for his channel “Professor Dave Explains,” opened the rally by criticizing what he called a growing anti-science sentiment from the federal government. Around 95,000 employees left federal science agencies in the first year of the second Trump administration, according to The New York Times.
“Science denial in the government is not brand new. We’ve had Republican senators denying climate change – or even evolution – for as long as I’ve been alive,” Farina said in a speech. “But what we’ve never had is an administration that pushes dangerous medical misinformation through the White House, NIH, CDC and FDA.”
Monique Trinh, a program manager in pathology and laboratory medicine at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, said in a speech that scientific research allowed her mother to participate in clinical trials after her cancer treatments stopped working.
“Science is not abstract to me. Science is my mom, science is hope, science is the reason families like mine were given time we might not otherwise have had,” Trinh said in a speech. “Now the question is whether we will protect the system that made that possible. When we protect science, we protect people and, when we work together, we ensure that knowledge continues to move humanity forward.”
Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA climate scientist and professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences, said she runs a geochemistry laboratory with the goal of studying past climate change and its implications for the modern climate crisis. However, her research team recently lost millions in grant funding, she added.
“My team, we lost 10 million in grant funding, and that’s not because the science wasn’t good but because somebody in D.C. decided we were expendable and our research was expendable,” Tripati said.
She added in a speech that attendees should support SB 895 as a safeguard for California to maintain its research infrastructure amid federal funding uncertainty.
Michael Chwe, a professor of political science and a member of the UCLA Faculty Association executive board, said advances in cancer treatment helped him recover from melanoma.
Gina Poe, the director of the UCLA Brain Research Institute, said federal research funding generates significant returns for the economy. Giving California its own source of research funding will boost the state’s scientific innovation and economy, Chwe added.
“It’s not a tax increase. It’ll provide around $23 billion for science funding,” Chwe said. “This basically creates an NSF or NIH just for California. That’s going to be a tremendous boon for getting biotech, for medicine, for green technology, for drug prices. It’s a really great thing.”
Vidya Saravanapandian, a postdoctoral scholar at UCLA, said scientific research is integral to creating treatments for patients with rare disorders.
Saravanapandian added in speech that she has worked with families of children with Dup15q syndrome – a rare genetic condition associated with autism, epilepsy and motor impairment – and added that research conducted at UCLA has already led to discoveries now being used in clinical trials.
Saravanapandian also said large public investments in research can have significant economic impacts, citing California Proposition 71 – California’s 2004 voter-approved initiative for funding stem cell research – which she said generated billions of dollars in economic output and tens of thousands of jobs.
Protesters marched along Wilshire Boulevard carrying signs in support of science funding and public health research after the speeches concluded at 1 p.m.
“My mom believed in paying it forward. Today, standing here with all of you, I believe that is exactly what we are doing,” Trinh said. “We are standing up for science not just for ourselves but for future patients, future students and future generations who deserve the chance to learn, discover and thrive.”
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