Updated June 25, 2026 at 11:44 AM EDT
Making a scientific breakthrough, after years of research, can be hard to put into words.
For Dr. Yilai Shu, a physician and research scientist at Fudan University in Shanghai, that moment came when the parents of a girl, born deaf, confirmed to him his treatment had worked: "They told me, Dr. Shu, it works! We called to her and she turned around, hearing us for the first time."
The girl's experience was the result of a single injection — an experimental gene therapy treatment — aimed at curing a rare form of deafness. It was a major breakthrough in the audiology world and one that made researchers around the world take note, including David Corey, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School who has spent decades aiming for that same breakthrough, working on the same problems.
"I'm not sure I would say that there's jealousy," says Corey, "but frustration that American scientists haven't been able to move as quickly."
The United States was once the research engine of the world. Now China may be taking the dominant role, thanks to massive investment and a disruptive year for American universities under the Trump administration. Just this year, Harvard lost its top spot in a global ranking measuring academic output to a university in China. In fact, 7 out of the top 10 schools on the list, curated by Leiden University in the Netherlands, are in China. This story — of geopolitical prowess, an American administration's changing priorities and the resulting scientific defunding — is playing out across dozens of fields of study.
In the case of Corey and Shu, both researchers are racing to find a cure for hereditary deafness — one in Boston and one in Shanghai — but they face very different realities.
The view from Harvard
At Harvard, Corey has been studying the inner ear for about 50 years. His research focuses on how cells in the inner ear — and the proteins within them — translate sound to the brain. "If there are mutations in the protein, then the ear doesn't work," explains Corey. Some children are born without hearing because there's a hereditary mutation in the protein. Corey and his team are developing therapies that can alter those proteins, reestablishing hearing in kids.
"Science at major academic medical centers is really going well. It's really exciting. Every day there are new breakthroughs, new understandings of how different tissues or organs work … leading to cures for diseases," Corey says.
Or at least, there were.
For Corey and his team, that work came to a grinding halt last year, when the federal research grant funding Corey's lab at Harvard was frozen by the Trump administration. It was among the billions of dollars in grants to universities that the White House halted in response to colleges, Harvard among them, rejecting a list of the administration's demands. The White House did not provide comment on why Corey's grant was frozen. The grant was eventually reinstated, after a federal judge ruled the Trump administration had broken the law by halting research grants, but by then, staff had left and research had stopped — and that has made it a challenge to restart.
Harvard does produce more research now than it did two decades ago, but new federal policies that add scrutiny to current grant proposals are making it harder to get new research dollars. Just last month, dozens of research grants at several elite universities, including Harvard and Duke, were temporarily held up or paused without explanation.
While the Trump administration has made things harder, Corey says the deprioritization of medical research goes back even further. While the National Institutes of Health does fund research for gene therapy for hearing loss, it can be a challenge to get funding for more rare conditions. Corey points to one particular strain he's been trying to get funding for, to no avail. "Over the last six years, I've put in eight proposals to the National Institutes of Health and received none of them," he says.
"Meanwhile, there's really exciting work being done in other countries," he says, "especially in China."
Getting results in Shanghai
In China, it's a different story.
"I have enough money to do research," says Shu, laughing.
China is pouring huge resources into developing all sorts of biological research, including gene therapy, aiming to curb its reliance on the West and become an even bigger world superpower. This spring, the country pledged billions in additional science funding. Shu, who trained at Harvard Medical School and is working on solving the same problems as David Corey, has plenty of staff in his lab, all the supplies he needs and can just get more done. "My lab is growing bigger and bigger," he says. And it's far bigger than his lab when he was in Boston, training under Corey and his mentees.
For decades, the U.S. has brought the smartest people in the world — like Yilai Shu — to its shores. Many have stayed. Shu wanted to, but family and a scientific opportunity, with lots of funding, drew him back home. That decision was rewarded when his team had a successful trial on a single injection that can restore hearing. More flexible trial protocols, a larger patient population and, of course, more money, have allowed Shu to move faster than his contemporaries in Europe and America.
That means the kind of breakthroughs the United States has long been known for feel less likely now in the West. And researchers on both sides of the ocean feel like the U.S. just isn't keeping up.
"It's great that the progress is being made," says Corey, "but I think it could have been made in the United States." When pressed, Shu concedes there is some joy in being the first, in beating the country where he trained. And yet, from his perch as a superstar in his field, he says it's hard to watch what's happening to research funding in the U.S. — and the disproportionate impact on international students — especially at the graduate level. International students enrolled in U.S. graduate programs are down more than 4%, according to the latest data from the National Student Clearinghouse. They are the target of separate Trump administration initiatives on immigration, including travel bans, added scrutiny to the student visa process and a temporary halt to interview appointments last summer.
For Corey, the impact that concerns him most is what will be felt by American families who have nothing to do with the research industrial complex.
"It may be that we can tell somebody, yeah, there is going to be a cure for your deaf child," he says, "but you may have to go to Shanghai to get it."
Edited by: Nirvi Shah
Visual design and development by: LA Johnson
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