UCLA’s Terence Tao: Funding suspensions and the future of math and science

UCLA professor Terence Tao, widely known as the "Mozart of Math," has reshaped vast areas of mathematics and has demonstrated how "pure math" research can have very tangible real-world benefits - including algorithms that have helped make MRI scans up to 10 times faster.

Read more about how UCLA #ResearchPowersProgress.

In the wake of the federal government's suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding to UCLA, Tao spoke to the Washington Post about the challenges now facing UCLA mathematicians and scientists - including those at the UCLA Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, where he serves as director of special projects and where he has led collaborations linking mathematical theory to engineering and medicine.

Read the full Washington Post interview.

Even beyond UCLA, Tao said, the current funding instability endangers the entire American science ecosystem because researchers can't achieve their best work without the support and predictability that the federal government has provided in the past.

"The U.S. has always had a strong scientific reputation, at least in my lifetime. It's just the sheer scale of activity and just the general support for science, until recently very bipartisan - an understanding that science brings prosperity, it helps national security," he said. "And it's just a public good."