A nationwide campaign led by Cornell students that resulted in hundreds of scientists publishing letters and op-eds in their hometown newspapers – each one a personal appeal on why public investment in research matters – has received the Meeting the Moment for Public Health Award from the non-profit Research!America.

The honor was announced ahead of Research!America’s 2026 Advocacy Awards ceremony, which will be hosted March 10 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., and recognizes the McClintock Letters campaign as “playing a key role in communicating important public health information to the public and rising to the challenge of the day.”

The McClintock Letters honors the legacy of Barbara McClintock – a Nobel Prize-winning plant biologist who received a B.S. in 1923 and Ph.D. in 1927 from Cornell – and was launched in early 2025 to amplify the voices of researchers in the face of rising threats to federal research funding. Members of the Cornell Advancing Science and Policy Club organized the campaign with colleagues from the Scientist Network for Advancing Policy.

The campaign resulted in the publishing of letters in more than 200 newspapers across 45 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico, each authored by a scientist with a personal story that connects their work to challenges including addiction recovery, nuclear energy and food security. Publication coincided with McClintock’s birthday, June 16, and the organizers have collected and shared the resulting letters on the campaign’s website.

“One of the greatest impacts is that we were able to share resources with the more than 600 scientists who signed up to write these letters, and that we had over 300 scientists attend trainings in science communication and op-ed writing,” said Isako Di Tomassi, who co-led the campaign as a doctoral candidate in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “The fact that hundreds of researchers took steps to strengthen their skills in public-facing science communication is an impact that we are very proud of.”

The effort received national attention from news outlets like The New York Times and NBC News, among others, and Di Tomassi was invited to speak on a policy and civic engagement panel at the 2026 Annual Conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“I'm heartened to see a such a warm reception of the initiative by established organizations like Research!America,” said Emma Scales, who co-led the campaign as a doctoral student in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “All this took was a good amount of elbow grease. Doing something like this, especially on a smaller scale, is not out of reach for others who are motivated to make a difference.”

Research!America cited Di Tomassi and Scales as being “passionate about shaping science and science policy guided by principles of empathy and altruism, as evidenced by their leadership of the McClintock Letters initiative.”

The Cornell Advancing Science and Policy Club is continuing its work with the initiative by launching a social science research project to examine how participation in the McClintock Letters and related science communication training influenced researchers’ interest in pursuing similar work in the future.

“The McClintock Letters initiative showed that scientists want to tell their stories, and that people want to hear them,” said Chris Schaffer, the Meinig Family Professor in the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering and faculty advisor of the Cornell Advancing Science and Policy Club. “Hundreds of scientists from across the country responded to our call to share their scientific work and its practical and inspirational value to us all. We hope this inspires more to do the same.”