In 2024, Katherine Trice, then a third-year psychology doctoral student, received the prestigious National Institutes of Health’s F31 diversity fellowship. It supplied a necessary equipment boost for her thesis work, which addresses how autistic and neurotypical adults learn and retain vocabulary. 

Trice was able to apply for the specific fellowship, which is reserved for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds, because she herself is autistic. 

But when President Donald Trump took office in January, the academic landscape changed swiftly as his administration made deep cuts to federal research funding. Now, uncertainty over the future of their employment, their grants — and academia itself — is haunting many Northeastern researchers.  

In particular, research funding earmarked for diverse applicants is being targeted by the Trump administration. According to reporting by The Chronicle of Higher Education, F31 diversity applications will no longer be considered. 

On May 23, Trice received an email from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, terminating her fellowship. It called her research “antithetical to the scientific inquiry,” saying it will “do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately [will] not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.” 

Now, the lack of funding risks “some of the integrity” of Trice’s thesis, which she still needs to publish to obtain her doctoral degree. She spent the summer scrambling to both continue the research and secure a salary to support her living expenses.

“Because I have a diverse identity, I no longer have funding, while people [who] don’t have that aspect of a class that experiences discrimination, or at least were not upfront about it, continue to have their funding,” Trice said.  

Trice’s grant was part of nine Northeastern-led grants, totaling $17.6 million, that have been terminated by the Trump administration, according to The Huntington News’ analysis of data compiled by Grant Witness. The News conducted a series of interviews with professors and graduate students from June to August and monitored grant terminations. The most recent disruption comes as federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and NIH halt proposal reviews and pause new grant awards amid a government shutdown, which began Oct. 1.

In addition to the Northeastern-led grants, many researchers collaborate with scholars at other universities, sharing grant funding through sub-contracts. 

According to an Aug. 4 update to Northeastern’s “Federal Landscape” FAQ page, about 40 Northeastern grants from a pool of around 900 were terminated. The approximately 40 grants listed combine Northeastern-led grants and sub-contracts with other universities. The terminated Northeastern-led grants included research on cancer misinformation, increasing diversity in STEM careers and improving the evidence base for seasonal and pandemic flu prevention and control. 

While at least four of the nine Northeastern-led projects that lost funding had already finished most of their planned work, others, like Trice, were cut off midway through years-long projects. Three principal investigators leading Northeastern-led grants that were cut did not respond to The News’ request for comment when asked about the impact of their grant’s termination, so the status of the remaining projects  is unclear. 

According to a Sept. 24 update to Northeastern’s FAQ page, several of the terminated grants are currently moving through the appeals process, and some have been successfully reinstated.

What research, exactly, is on the chopping block?

The uptick in terminations comes amid the Trump administration’s campaign against “woke” federally funded research. The administration eliminated certain grants given to applicants who have noted being from an underrepresented background, as well as grants that match certain buzzwords related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. But despite the stated aim against “woke” research, the cuts have felt “random” at points, Trice said. 

“It’s just heartbreaking and horrific and sometimes bizarrely humorous to just talk to people and hear this [grant] got canceled or this [grant] got randomly reinstated in an email at like 3 a.m. in [their] inbox with no warning,” Trice said. 

In a Sept. 30 interview with Northeastern’s Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Beth Winkelstein, who oversees the university’s academic mission and research enterprise, she told The News that Northeastern has “fared really well” in terms of the number of grant terminations since January. When asked for a specific number of grants that were terminated, the university directed The News to the “Federal Landscape” FAQ page.

The Trump administration has cut science funding to its lowest level in decades by gutting the Environmental Protection Agency and reducing funding for the National Science Foundation, or NSF, the NIH, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (In FY 2024, Northeastern received $67.6 million from the NSF and $88.3 million from the NIH for research.) 

Although the impacts are being felt immediately, experts are worried about the long-term consequences of funding cuts. The United States has led the world in STEM research for decades, but without the money, the future is uncertain.

“Universities are a huge economic engine, and the ability of undergrads and grads to participate in cutting-edge research that benefits the world shapes who they are in their careers,” said Brian Helmuth, a professor of marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern. “If we’ve now told them that that’s no longer valued by society and that the U.S. government is no longer paying for it, where does that leave us as an American culture?”

The NSF has said that moving forward, it will prioritize research on artificial intelligence, quantum information science, biotechnology and nuclear energy. 

Northeastern has yet to be publicly singled out by the Trump administration, unlike other universities, including Harvard University and Columbia University, which have had their operations put under a microscope. To Randall Hughes, a professor of marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern, such public targeting feels like a looming threat. 

“That’s just a whole other possibility that, of course, I think all academics are thinking about,” Hughes said of Northeastern being targeted by the federal government. 

In a June 5 update to the FAQ page, Northeastern is advised research faculty to “continue to carry out activities on current NSF awards as well as develop proposals for new awards of interest as they become available” due to the “fluid situation.” The notice was taken down after a Sept. 24 update. 

‘I woke up every day scared for that email that mine was going to be terminated.’

For Kylea Garces, one of few researchers funded by the NSF’s coveted postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, each day she does not wake up to an email cutting her funding is cause for celebration. Since receiving the fellowship in 2024, she’s been based at Northeastern, where she began investigating whether fungi could help plants become more resilient to global change in coastal salt marshes.  

One year into her funding, Garces’ research was included in a list of more than 3,400 grants deemed “neo-Marxist propaganda” by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Cruz’s report flagged any grant containing one of the more than 600 keywords, which included “woman,” “climate change” and “diversity.” 

“I woke up every day scared for that email that mine was going to be terminated,” Garces said. “I celebrated at 5 p.m. when I made it through another Friday of not being cut because this is not just research money. This is my salary, my livelihood, my actual pay that is being cut. And believe me, it’s not that much to begin with.”

Before Trump targeted existing federal research funds, grants from the NSF felt “secure,” Garces said. 

“I assumed those were going to be cuts to new programs,” she said. “It did not even cross my mind for the first bit of time that it could be cuts to already given funding.”

‘We’re just going to lose those people to the field.’

Multiple Northeastern professors told The News that departments can only guarantee funding for a limited number of students, an issue that could worsen in the coming years.

In a Feb. 6 update to its “Federal Landscape” FAQ page, Northeastern stated that all funding commitments to doctoral students in their individual admissions letters will be fully honored “even if a student’s federal grant funding is suspended or terminated.”

Hughes doesn’t think the university will see the true change in the number of doctoral students until next year because “so much of the process has already played out by the time these things started to take effect in the spring,” she said.

After larger grant terminations, some Northeastern departments have been forced to support grant-funded doctoral students by compiling smaller grants or moving them to another grant-funded research project. And while fellowship cuts like Trice’s greatly impact individual research, the larger federal grant cuts affect principal investigators’ ability to hire and keep research assistants, multiple researchers said. 

Multiple professors told The News that they are working to secure funds that can support doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers and undergraduate research assistants whose funding and salaries hinge on grant money. Two professors told The News that while struggling to support those existing students, hiring for prospective students has slowed due to uncertainty around future funding.

Winkelstein, who stepped into her role Aug. 22, told The News at the end of September that she is “still getting to know where we are with our doctoral students” and did not specify whether there has been a change in the number of doctoral students accepted. Northeastern media relations did not confirm if there were any changes to the number of doctoral students accepted in response to several follow-up emails. 

“We’re just going to lose those people to the field, and it’s going to be really hard to rebuild that population and that pipeline of people,” Hughes said. 

Receiving a large federal grant is also an important element of the tenure and promotion process for professors. Now, the increased rarity of those grants is leading departments to reconsider how assistant and associate professors are evaluated. Principal investigators, who tend to be professors, could also feel a financial impact if they lose a grant, since grants provide them with a summer salary they otherwise would not receive. 

Some Northeastern researchers are now turning to private foundations and nonprofits for funding, something Northeastern may have a unique advantage in due to relationships built through the university’s co-op program, Helmuth said. Co-op connections have given Northeastern “good working relationships” with private companies outside of the university, he said, adding that the university has also pushed to hire more people who have worked within the private sector. Some researchers are also either working with academics in Europe or considering relocating abroad to continue their research. 

But, as Helmuth pointed out, the potential funding provided by other sources is still a “very limited amount of money.” While collaborating with researchers internationally is an opportunity to continue doing research no longer possible in the U.S., Helmuth said that oftentimes the European institutions are unable to fund students’ stipends. 

Garces assumed her fellowship guaranteed three years of support, but the money only comes in stipends annually. Under Trump, the money could be rejected mid-way through a grant without warning. While she has secured funding for the second year of the three-year fellowship, she is nervous about the future.  

‘I did not think that they would target cancer misinformation.’

Multiple Northeastern researchers said they are finding it difficult not to use words that might trigger a word detector, like one used to compile Cruz’s list. According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, around 600 NIH-funded research projects were modified to remove DEI references.

“I’ve only written one grant proposal to a federal agency since this new administration took power,” Helmuth said. “It was so impossible to talk about things like climate change without actually using the word that I gave up. It was so clear that there was no way that it would be funded.”    

While many of Northeastern’s terminated grants are more explicitly DEI-related, some terminations came as a complete shock to researchers.

Briony Swire-Thompson, an assistant professor of political science and psychology at Northeastern, has devoted her academic career to misinformation research. When her grant to track cancer misinformation was cut, it was “totally out of the blue.” 

“I did not think that they would target cancer misinformation,” she said.

Her grant, titled “Cancer Misinformation on Social Media and its Correction,” was in the fourth year of six years of funding. The project aimed to understand the prevalence of cancer misinformation online, examine its sources and find solutions. She believes it was cut because of the politicization around misinformation. 

Although it will take Swire-Thompson a while longer to write up the results of the data already collected, hiring additional students to participate in the research is out of the question.  

Aron Stubbins, a professor in chemistry and chemical biology and marine and environmental sciences, was one of three Northeastern professors working on a $2.1 million grant that aimed to improve the quality of drinking water. The grant, titled “Integrated Water Microbiome and Disinfection Byproducts Monitoring and Management to Advance Drinking Water Quality,” was cut in May after two years into a five-year grant. 

The team collected a year’s worth of data, which it hopes to use as effectively as possible. But, Stubbins said, “it won’t be as deep and rewarding and societally beneficial as it would be if the funding had remained in place.”

What comes next? 

The graduate students previously working on the water quality grant have been moved to other grants as the department fights to keep their existing students funded. 

Stubbins’ team planned to produce at least a dozen more research publications, which are now halted, and inform best-practice changes at drinking water facilities. Georgia Institute of Technology, the lead institution, appealed the termination. 

“[Northeastern is] aware of the concerns and doing their best to try and mitigate them,” Hughes said. “I think it’s just hard to replace federal funding because it’s a lot of funding.”

The uncertainty has had a “demoralizing” effect on Northeastern researchers, Helmuth said. 

“We spent our entire careers doing work that we think has a positive impact on society,” Helmuth said. “And it’s really disheartening to be told by the federal government that what we do is a waste of money and is useless when really our careers have been centered on this idea that we can use scientific research to benefit society.”

Campus editor Zoe MacDiarmid contributed reporting.