BOSTON – At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, faculty fret about the future of the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.

Thirty miles away, administrators at the state university campus in Lowell worry that research aimed at designing better body armor for soldiers could suffer.

The concerns have emerged because of automatic federal budget cuts that could reduce government funding for research done at educational institutions, spending that totaled about $33.3 billion in 2010, Education Department statistics show. And the possible cuts add to another anxiety at those schools and others across the country: brain drain.