CHAPEL HILL (June 13, 2025) – As Trump administration officials take aim at university research across the country, they need to recall that old line about the goose that laid the golden egg.

UNC-Chapel Hill receives $1.55 billion a year in research grants. That in turn generates $3 billion in economic impact in the state, 11,000 jobs, 3,000 jobs at start-up companies and the purchase of $100 million in local goods and services.

“Let alone the societal benefit from the work that we do,” Dr. Penny Gordon-Larsen, the University’s Vice Chancellor for Research, says in the accompanying video.

“We’ve had enormous impact,” she says.

She lists some of those many societal benefits:

• Advances in treatment of HIV/AIDS and blood diseases;
• Cancer detection and treatment, including CAR T-cell therapy;
• Removal of PFAS “forever chemicals” from drinking water; and
• Development of a handheld ultrasound device to detect babies at risk in underserved communities in both Eastern and Western North Carolina – in a state with a persistently high infant-mortality rate. (And Zambia too, for that matter.)

“We try to innovate to solve problems in our own state,” Gordon-Larsen says.

Indeed, why would anyone reduce support for such important work?