Harvard physicist Gary Feldman and his collaborators thought 2008 would be a year of opportunity. Their plans for NOvA, a neutrino experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, had received positive reviews, and Congress and President George Bush seemed poised to increase funding for the physical sciences.

But at the end of December, Feldman, cospokesperson for the project, received some very bad news. Congress unexpectedly cut $94 million from the high-energy physics budget, slashing funds for NOvA and other projects at Fermilab and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. US research and design efforts for the International Linear Collider (ILC)—an international particle accelerator still in the planning stages that represents the next big step for the field—have also been suspended. Several countries are vying to host the ILC, and Boston-area physicists fear that the budget cutbacks will jeopardize any American bid to be the ILC’s home.

The shrunken budget has effectively cancelled or drastically cut back large-scale experiments—for example, construction of NOvA’s detector has been delayed indefinitely—and has put planning on hold, leaving many Boston physicists uncertain about the future of their field.

“Students worry about having to work on experiments in Asia and Europe after this,” says Mayly Sanchez, a visiting scholar at Harvard who works with graduate students on neutrino projects. “They don’t see an optimistic future for high-energy physics in the States.”

Out of America

Georgios Choudalakis is a graduate student at MIT working at Fermilab. He came to the United States from Greece because of America’s reputation for pioneering new scientific programs. “How does [the United States] manage to attract the best? A major factor is that it funds the best universities and laboratories,” he says. But after his PhD, Choudalakis plans to move to CERN, the high-energy physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.

So far, only budgets for large-scale projects and facilities have been cut, but some Boston researchers are concerned that there may be less money available for smaller grants too, and that could affect the next generation of physicists. “If we don’t get funding, we can’t take on students,” says Ed Kearns, a professor of physics at Boston University. “Federal research dollars don’t go into rocket fuel that gets burned up; the money funds graduate students who we train in fundamental research. Those students go on to jobs not only in particle physics but also in the private sector here in Boston.”

Speaking up

Some Boston researchers are fighting back. Tufts physics professor Hugh Gallagher says that he’s been calling and faxing Senators John Kerry and Edward Kennedy, and Congressmen Ed Markey and Mike Capuano.

“One of the most concrete things that’s come out of this is the realization that the scientific community has to articulate to politicians and representatives why our research is so important and so vital to the training and education [of PhDs] in this country,” he says. “Nothing in Washington is safe unless there are people advocating for it.”

Feldman and his colleagues at NOvA have not yet given up hope. This spring, Congress could pass a supplemental appropriations bill to restore some funding. “We are doing everything we can to influence the political process and remain hopeful,” Feldman says.

Editor’s note: A correction has been made. Georgios Choudalakis is a graduate student, not a postdoc.