Panicking scientists, canceled experiments – federal funding cuts turned my work as a research dean into crisis management

by Nara Parameswaran, Michigan State University, [This article first appeared in The Conversation, republished with permission]

Fielding frantic faculty emails and panicked texts was not how I had hoped my 2025 would begin. Little did I imagine that my role as a research dean at a medical school would be taken over by navigating chaotic grant terminations and delays of federal research funding, all justified in the name of scientific progress.

Under normal conditions, a major part of my job is reducing barriers for faculty, staff and students engaged in innovative research. For example, I make sure my faculty have enough human help to complete necessary administrative tasks so they can focus on their science while writing their grants. My overall goal is to remove roadblocks and foster an environment in which new discoveries are made that can improve people’s lives.

But none of us in research leadership positions around the country had ever faced anything like the Trump administration’s attacks on universities and science.

One of my first clues that we were no longer operating in business-as-usual mode was when the White House terminated U.S. Agency for International Development grants. Michigan State University was one of the institutions affected by this major blow to agricultural, food and other global research, but the medical school where I work wasn’t directly hit. Our turn came when DOGE – the Department of Government Efficiency, a Trump administration effort at eliminating bureaucratic waste – turned its attention to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

As the White House took aim at higher education and the scientific research enterprise with its budgetary scalpels, my world was thrown into chaos.

The human costs of grant uncertainty

While interruptions to grant funding slow scientific progress, there is an immediate real-world human cost to the upheaval.

Consider the case of one of my junior faculty members. 2025 was a critical year for them: If they didn’t receive funding, they would lose their employment – it’s common in academia for scientists to need to raise money to support their own research and part of their salary. Their NIH program officer – the person who recommends whether a grant would be funded – had previously told them their proposal would likely be successful. But by February 2025, that NIH officer was DOGE’d – that is, fired – and so the fate of the grant remained in limbo.

The review of a second grant proposal that this MSU researcher had submitted to NIH was delayed by several months after NIH suspended the panels that assess the scientific merit of grant submissions.

By the time the faculty member received initial feedback on that grant and resubmitted it for reevaluation, the government had shut down and delayed the review again. By this point, nearly a year had passed and no grant had been awarded – or rejected, for that matter.

Without funding, this faculty member cannot conduct experiments, pay or train students and other lab members, or purchase essential supplies to do experiments. As a result, both scientific progress and their career advancement remain in jeopardy; they hang on by a thread while waiting for yet another grant to come through.

Sadly, this was not an unusual case. A number of faculty – at my school and across the country – had received funding, only to have the government cancel their grants mid-project for unknown or unclear reasons. Haphazard grant terminations or prolonged uncertainty create chaos not only for faculty, but also for students, research staff and all the families who depend on these positions for income.

Identifying new resources to help faculty continue their work became one of my top priorities. But finding spare money is not a trivial task. It meant working with the college and university leaders to identify resources, prioritizing some spending while holding back on other budget items, as well as raising money from the community for what we called “research rescue.”

A small group of medical school research deans from various universities started meeting on Sundays – the only day that worked for everyone. We share information, provide advice and support and try to think strategically about how to help faculty. We talk about any successes and commiserate about the depth of the chaos at our institutions. None of us were trained to deal with this kind of situation, and the support of this group has been critical for me personally.

In addition, the research deans from various colleges here at MSU discuss these issues regularly with each other and other university officials to strategize how to navigate these difficult times, sharing information among people with different roles.

A generation of scientists at risk

One of the most profound consequences of all this instability has been its impact on the next generation of scientists, especially Ph.D. students and postdoctoral scholars. Not only are these early-career researchers training to be the scientists of the future, but they are also essential contributors to performing grant-funded experiments, publishing in scientific journals and ensuring research program continuity.

By June 2025, several dozen Ph.D. students across my campus were affected by grant terminations or delays. With more than 100 faculty from my college concerned about funding, many postdoctoral scholars working under them faced uncertain futures. This wasn’t unique to our college or university – this was, and is, a national problem.

Anticipating deep cuts to funding for student stipends and training, institutions were forced to reduce or even cancel graduate student admissions for the year.

Additional widespread disruption stemmed from revoking F-1 visas, which had allowed international students to study in the U.S., and terminating related recordkeeping, placing international students in academic and personal limbo.

Recruitment and training were further complicated by a September 2025 proclamation calling for restrictions on H-1B visas. This further constrained universities’ ability to recruit postdoctoral scholars and faculty who aren’t American citizens.

Unsurprisingly, these conditions have profoundly shaped how students and trainees assess their future careers. In a 2025 survey of 824 trainees, 77% said that recent executive orders or federal policy changes influenced their career plans significantly or somewhat. The long-term implications of these barriers could be grim, especially because more than half of the country’s postdoc scholars in science, technology, engineering and math, and around a third of the country’s graduate students, are visa holders.

Recent data on who received grant funding revealed troubling trends, particularly for early-career investigators. As a research dean, my major worry is about the livelihoods of these scientists, especially because most of them have young families to provide for.

A new reality for scientists

Countless breakthroughs that have altered the course of human and animal health have been made possible by sustained federal research investment through agencies such as NIH. These discoveries are made by real people working in research labs or in the communities we serve, and this work requires real money.

Declines in support for these researchers, coupled with reduced graduate enrollment and ongoing visa challenges, risk erasing an entire generation of scientists, with consequences that will reverberate for many years.

All these unresolved challenges – grant terminations, potential reductions in funding for research infrastructure, federal workforce cuts, visa instability, lawsuits and threats to the next generation of the scientific workforce – have converged into a single reality: Uncertainty has become the norm. Each day brings new questions about who will be affected and how to respond in ways that protect faculty, staff and students so they can continue their important work.

Nara Parameswaran, Senior Associate Dean for Research, College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.