Brian Donovan
Genetics Education Researcher · Science Educator
Why This Entry Exists
Structural Observation Brian Donovan's documented research career demonstrates the core criterion for this list in unusually clear form: a researcher who entered a field with a set of assumptions, ran controlled experiments, found that his assumptions were wrong, and redesigned his methodology accordingly. The evidence moved him. Not the other way around.
Donovan began his research operating on a reasonable premise: that teaching students accurate information about genetics would naturally reduce essentialist thinking about race. His own randomized controlled trials disproved this. Standard genetics instruction — particularly when it introduced racial categories in the context of disease prevalence — was found to increase genetic essentialism in adolescent students, not reduce it.
Rather than defend the original framework, Donovan documented the finding, published it, and rebuilt the curriculum around what the data showed. The result — humane genomics education — was not the intervention he set out to design. It was the intervention the evidence required.
Documented Fact This revised approach was tested across a series of randomized controlled trials in six U.S. states. The results were published in Science in February 2024: humane genomics education demonstrably reduced belief in genetic essentialism among middle and high school students. The study represented over a decade of iterative experimental work.
Career & Research Timeline
Documented Fact Donovan holds a BA in Biology from Colorado College (2001), an MA in Teaching from the University of San Francisco, and an MS in Biology and PhD in Science Education from Stanford University (2016). He taught middle school science in San Francisco for seven years before entering research.
Documented Fact After Stanford, Donovan joined BSCS Science Learning in Colorado Springs — the oldest science education organization in the United States — as a Senior Research Scientist. He secured NSF Grant EHR Core Award #1660985 ($1.29 million) to develop and test the humane genomics literacy curriculum. A second NSF grant followed to replicate the study at scale, targeting more than 16,000 students across 33 states.
Documented Fact In February 2024, two papers co-authored by Donovan's team were published simultaneously in Science: "Humane Genomics Education Can Reduce Racism" (Vol. 383, Issue 6685, pp. 818–822, DOI: 10.1126/science.adi7895) and "Sex and Gender Essentialism in Textbooks." In the same month, Donovan received a cancer diagnosis — immune system cancer, incurable but manageable.
Documented Fact In September 2024, Donovan moved to the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado Boulder. On a single Friday in April 2025, both of his NSF grants were terminated — part of the administration's mass cancellation of science education awards determined to "no longer effectuate administration priorities." By the end of summer 2025, Donovan and his team were unemployed. He is currently preparing to apply to nursing school.
The NSF Terminations
Documented Fact Donovan's grants were among 1,752 terminated by the NSF as of May 2025, totaling $1.4 billion in cancelled awards. The STEM Education directorate absorbed the largest share: 839 grants terminated, representing 48% of all terminations and 65% of total funding cut. NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned April 24, 2025.
Documented Fact The team had been months away from completing data collection on the large-scale replication study — the final phase before releasing the curriculum publicly — when the termination notices arrived. The data will not be completed at the originally intended scale.
Structural Observation The simultaneous termination of both grants on the same day — rather than staggered review — is consistent with the documented pattern of mass administrative termination rather than individual grant evaluation. The NSF declined to comment on specific terminations.
Awards & Coverage
Documented Fact Donovan received the 2020 NARST Early Career Research Award and the NARST Research Worth Reading Award in both 2017 and 2022. In February 2026, the Genetics Society of America announced him as the recipient of the Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education — understood within the field as a lifetime achievement recognition.
Documented Fact His research has been covered by The New York Times, The Atlantic, EdWeek, BBC Radio, The Independent, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Peer assessments on record include Jon Shemwell (University of Alabama): his studies were described as "stunningly impressive" and Donovan as "a generational talent." Andrei Cimpian (NYU) described his combination of statistical expertise and cross-disciplinary literacy as a skill set he had "not encountered in one person before."
What Would Move This Entry
Structural Observation This entry is on the Recommend list because the documented record demonstrates a researcher who followed evidence into uncomfortable conclusions and rebuilt his methodology accordingly — the core criterion for this list. It would move to the Watching list if future documented work showed a pattern of conclusions preceding evidence, or if the methodological rigor that characterizes his published record degraded in ways observable in primary sources.
The record is under active review. The reader is the final arbiter.