In a nationwide campaign led by Cornell students, more than 500 scientists have committed to writing letters and op-eds in their hometown newspapers across all 50 states – each one a personal appeal on why public investment in research matters.

The campaign, dubbed 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 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 way the public responds to this funding threat depends on the stories they hear, and who they hear them from,” said Isako Di Tomassi, who co-led the campaign with fellow doctoral student Emma Scales, both based in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “Local communities rarely get to connect with the scientists whose work their tax dollars support. Direct engagement is how we can foster trust.”

The target publication date for letters generated by the campaign coincided with McClintock’s birthday, June 16. As that day arrived, letters and op-eds from researchers across the country had already appeared in newspapers from Pennsylvania to Georgia to Kansas. The organizers are collecting and sharing on the campaign’s website the letters, each authored by a scientist with a personal story that connects their work to challenges including addiction recovery, nuclear energy and food security.

In Spokane, Washington, a doctoral student explained how studying stem cells in fruit flies may one day improve human heart health. In Northfield, Minnesota, a professor detailed how federal funding provided a pathway to studying embryonic development, having been a first-generation student born on a local farm.

“I especially wanted to write to my hometown to share my gratitude for all of the ways that my community shaped the scientific path that I'm on today, and also to share my worries about our scientific future,” said Katherine Xue, an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine, who wrote to her hometown newspaper in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, about the role of microbes in treating human genetic disease.

“Science is a human endeavor, and it is the human stories behind research – about chance, resilience and breakthrough – that truly connect science and scientists to communities,” 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. Schaffer, who wrote about the role of luck in his research on Alzheimer’s disease, was one of more than 70 Cornell faculty and students who committed to participating in the campaign. “The McClintock Letters aim to tell these personal stories of struggle and triumph that drive progress, and remind the public what’s at stake when support for science is at risk."

In addition to op-ed submissions, the campaign includes an open letter signed by early-career scientists across the country, calling for unity and urgent action to protect federal research funding.

Syl Kacapyr is associate director of marketing and communications for Cornell Engineering.