When he takes his oath of office next January, Daniel K. Biss will be among the most junior members of the House of Representatives. Even so, Mr. Biss, who was elected on Tuesday to represent the North Side of Chicago and nearby suburbs, is likely to be Washington’s foremost expert on matroid Grassmannians.

“I’ve pretty much cornered the market,” Mr. Biss joked in an interview.

Ominous name aside, matroid Grassmannians are just complex mathematical shapes — as well as the subject of the dissertation Mr. Biss completed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002. Mr. Biss, now 49, taught math at the University of Chicago before moving to politics, first as an Illinois state legislator and then as the mayor of Evanston, a prosperous Chicago suburb. (His academic career has not been without controversy: Some of his work has been retracted or corrected, and this year he admitted to having a relationship in 2004 with an undergraduate student.)

Mr. Biss is one of several scientists and physicians who was elected to Congress on Tuesday. Like him, most are Democrats and most were elected to the House. They plan, they say, to use their knowledge to combat what they see as the anti-science policies promoted by the Trump administration.

The incoming scientists represent “a real repudiation of what has been two terrible years for science and public health,” said Shaughnessy Naughton, president of 314 Action, a group that recruits Democratic doctors and scientists to run for office. Her group supported Democratic candidates who ended up winning in the House, as well as two incoming senators: Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist, in Michigan and Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, in South Carolina.

(In keeping with New York Times style, physicians and academics who stop practicing once elected to a political office are not given the courtesy title doctor.)

After World War II, the United States became a scientific powerhouse thanks to federal funding of research in the sciences. But decades of partnership between Washington and defense contractors, Silicon Valley and other sectors are being undermined by the Trump administration, according to a recently published Times investigation.

President Trump and congressional Republicans have enacted cuts to Medicaid and allowed the expiration of tax credits provided by the Affordable Care Act. His administration has sought cuts to science funding and has subjected research to political scrutiny.

Thousands of experts have left agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services, now led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic whose Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement has been accused of peddling junk science.

“Now is a good time to course-correct and actually provide some oversight,” said Ms. Naughton of the new crop of science-minded Democrats.

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Jasmine Clark wears a pink jacket and black shirt as she speaks into a microphone in a session of the Georgia House.

Jasmine Clark, a microbiologist at Emory University, will represent parts of greater Atlanta in the House next year.Credit...Alex Slitz/Associated Press

Among those who hope to face off against Mr. Kennedy is Jasmine Clark, 43, who will represent parts of greater Atlanta in the House next year. Ms. Clark, a microbiologist at Emory University, said she was drawn to politics after Mr. Trump’s first presidential win in 2016.

She organized a pro-science march and criticized how Georgia reported coronavirus cases during the pandemic. Lately, she has watched with dismay as the C.D.C., which is based in Atlanta, has been drained of expertise. “The morale at C.D.C. is horrible,” she said.

Ms. Clark praised Mr. Kennedy for highlighting the prevalence of pesticides and processed foods but was critical of his inconsistent messaging about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and his handling of a growing number of measles outbreaks.

“It has been an absolute disaster,” Ms. Clark said of MAHA. “It’s making us sicker.”

Investigating the Trump administration will be one aspect of the Democrats’ agenda. Another will be to create policy of their own.

“The importance of having scientists, engineers and health professionals in national, state and local political positions cannot be overstated,” said Deborah D. Stine, an independent consultant who served as the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology during the Obama administration. She cited issues like artificial intelligence, climate change and national security, which legislators with scientific backgrounds may find easier to grapple with than their peers. “If the policy question is outside their own expertise they know how to call on the best experts,” Dr. Stine said.

Scientific expertise will be especially welcome on Capitol Hill, said Matthew Motta, an expert on health policy at Boston University, because of a 2024 Supreme Court ruling that said courts no longer needed to defer to agency interpretations of vague laws — meaning that Congress will have to be more specific in how those laws are written.

“One of the things that I think is going to be really important in the coming years is having legislators who have that expertise,” Dr. Motta said.

Other newly elected legislators with backgrounds in science include John Cowan, a Republican from Georgia who is a neurosurgeon and majored in physics as an undergraduate, and Rebecca Bennett, who has a chemical engineering degree from Cornell and will represent a district in northern New Jersey

Ms. Bennett, 39, said in an interview that she had many constituents who worked in the health care industry and were concerned about what she described as the federal government’s destructive interference in the workings of the scientific establishment.

Mr. Biss, the mathematician, said he believed that his colleagues with backgrounds in science would bring an important perspective on problem solving to Congress.

“The best habits of mind involve as few black boxes as possible and as much deep understanding as possible,” he said.

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