While private industry and charitable foundations are willing to put up dollars for applied, late-stage research, federal sponsorship has traditionally provided for early-stage, basic inquiry. Researchers said they worry that federal agencies like the NIH and NSF will begin funding a larger number of applied research or basic projects that seem to be sure bets, leaving traditional basic research projects underfunded.

“Sometimes the benefits that you get from basic research are much, much broader, much more broadly applicable, and they are more of a public good,” Garber said. “Some of the most fundamental breakthroughs in areas like treatment of diseases come from basic research.”

Scientists who conduct basic research said that it often yields big breakthroughs that lay the groundwork for applied technologies, medical treatments, and drugs that drive industry. Once basic research dries up, they said, applied research will follow.

“In academia, we are the ones who can take longterm views, and basically do the sort of fundamental science even when it’s not clear what the payoff will be,” said Cox, a former Crimson design editor. “So if you take that pipeline and you stall it...it’s going to have a huge adverse effect on the economy.”

A LOST GENERATION

The threat to basic research affects not only the output of scientific ideas but also the output of scientists themselves. Basic research is the bread and butter of University-based scientific inquiry, and as it shrinks, so will the ranks of the academy.

“The pipeline of scientific breakthroughs also depends on the pipeline of talent,” said Medical School Executive Dean of Research William W. Chin flanked by prominent Massachusetts politicians and health researchers at a rally in mid-February. “Its flow cannot be turned down without long-term consequences. A generation of scientists could be lost in a period of profound funding reduction.”

Researchers, young and old, said the problem facing young scientists is two-fold. Because better-established labs tend to have a more proven track record, they are likely to get a greater share of support from increasingly conservative funding agencies looking more and more toward results. Consequently, junior faculty trying to establish new labs can expect to have a harder time getting funded.

Universities like Harvard offer seed money to promising scientists to get their research off the ground, said Cox, whose interdisciplinary lab is less than a year old. But that money does not last forever and securing grants to replace it in a stagnant funding climate can be difficult.

“I think everybody’s feeling pressure. It’s a slightly terrifying time to be starting out in research because the long term prospects are very uncertain,” Cox said. He explained that he currently has five different NSF proposals under consideration, whereas usual circumstances might warrant two.

But for many, particularly those still in graduate school or in post-doctoral fellowships, the prospects are more perilous. Federal cuts over the next decade could, researchers said, be enough to push this young talent away from academic research.

Whether those young scientists move abroad to emerging research hubs in Beijing or Berlin, or leave the field altogether, University researchers worry about the long-term effects on their fields.

“These sequestration cuts, without being too overly dramatic, could be the next step on what many have been predicting over the last half dozen years as the loss of an entire generation of brilliant scientists,” said Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Jeffrey D. Macklis. “As a senior investigator, who has a reputation in the field and can be successful in getting grants from multiple sources, I can buffer myself through this storm, but there are incredibly talented young investigators who are just being denied the ability to get started.”

—Sabrina A. Mohamed and Samuel Y. Weinstock contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Nicholas P. Fandos can be reached at nicholasfandos@college.harvard.edu. You can follow him on Twitter @npfandos.

—Staff writer Nikita Kansra can be reached at nikitakansra@college.harvard.edu. You can follow her on Twitter @NikitaKansra.