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The Dartmouth
February 28, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Changes to federal research funding cause ‘uncertainty’ on campus

College President Sian Leah Beilock has communicated to faculty that the College will not pause existing research or grant spending at this time.

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Three Dartmouth students concerned with how federal research funding will affect their career prospects have been given the code names Allie, Brandon and Catherine. Each student has been granted anonymity so they may speak candidly about their experiences.

On Jan. 21, one day after taking office, President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders with wide-ranging impacts. Among them was a declaration to halt all research grant reviews from the National Institutes of Health, the largest source of biomedical research funding in the country. The order has sparked both confusion and concern at Dartmouth.

According to an annual report from the College’s Office of Sponsored Projects, Dartmouth received more than $148 million in research funding from government agencies in 2023, including approximately $83 million from the NIH.

After the initial freeze on Jan. 28, College President Sian Leah Beilock addressed the executive orders relevant to federally sponsored research and contracts in an email to faculty obtained by The Dartmouth. 

According to the email, the College will not pause research or grant spending on existing awards at this time. 

“Faculty, staff, students and postdocs supported by federal funding should continue their normal activities unless otherwise informed by Dartmouth’s Office of Sponsored Projects,” Beilock wrote.

The executive order’s future has grown increasingly uncertain. On Jan. 28, Trump ordered a wider freeze on all federal grants and loans, which was temporarily blocked by U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan. The Trump administration reversed the freeze the next day.

Still, College officials are preparing other contingency plans. The Office of Sponsored Projects has been in contact with principal investigators — lead researchers and direct recipients of grants — whose awards are impacted by “emerging” federal guidance, the email continued. The Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation and United States Department of Agriculture have all contacted the OSP about funding, according to the email. 

“The National Institutes of Health clarified some elements of its communication freeze, while the NSF has joined NIH in canceling some review panel meetings,” Beilock wrote. 

Geography professor Justin Mankin — who has received funding from several federal agencies — said the funding freezes have caused “chaos.” 

According to a research assistant for a lab that receives NIH funding — who will be referred to in this article as Brandon — the grant money supports access to data and specimens, lab maintenance,  software needs and wages for graduate students and research assistants. The funding changes may impact ongoing time-sensitive research projects, he added. 

“There are biological reasons why work can’t stop,” Brandon said. “[Specimens] will die or experiments will time out.”

Brandon added that attempts by the Trump administration to “externally manipulate” research funding are “concerning” because processes to obtain research funding are “already very slow moving and require a lot of diligence and patience.” 

“… Any blip in that process … really adversely affects the kind of work that can be done,” Brandon said. 

Across campus, other student researchers whose projects are tied up in federal spending echoed those concerns. “Catherine,” a student researcher who has worked in two labs that received NIH funding, said she was “blind sided” after she found out about the executive order. Catherine added that she also has an offer to work at a lab after graduation where “a lot” of her salary will “presumably” come from NIH grants. 

“For young career scientists like my bosses, these big NIH grants are really important for getting started,” she said. 

Catherine said she may reconsider her aspiration to pursue an MD-Ph.D. — a degree combining a doctor of medicine with a doctor of philosophy — for a conventional Ph.D. program if changes in NIH funding affect the program. 

“I want to be an MD-Ph.D., and that basically subsidizes med[ical] school for you if you get admitted into the program,” Catherine said. “So if they’re reevaluating funding for these programs, there’s a chance that this program might not exist, and I might have to pay for med school fully.” 

According to a student affected by federal agency funding  — who will be referred to in this article as Allie — the funding uncertainty has impacted her senior thesis advisor. She added that her thesis advisor is “super stressed” about navigating how to publish research and acquire funding for future papers. 

“He [said], ‘I’m getting different things from different people,’” Allie said. “‘It’s only been three days in this administration — I’m so stressed out.’”

Allie’s search for a master’s program advisor has also been affected by the confusion around the executive order. She explained that a potential master’s program advisor shared that 70% of his funding comes from the DOE and agencies in the government that are “more susceptible to administration changes.”

“Right now, it doesn’t make sense for [him] to put aside the money for a grad[uate] student,” Allie said. 

Mankin — whose research includes the physical climate system and climate hazards from greenhouse gas emissions — said he expects climate change research to “undergo additional scrutiny” and “receive less support from these funding agencies” in the future. The field received “scrutiny” during the first Trump administration, he added.

Mankin also said he has had conversations with NSF program managers who are facing “ambiguity” about the future and adapting how “best to advise” principal investigators about the uncertainty.

“I’ve had a grant deadline that I was preparing to submit to the NSF this week, and [I] have decided to stop that work until I get clarity,” Mankin said. 

Abby Kambhampaty ’25, a student researcher at the Dartmouth Space Medicine Innovations Lab with NIH funding, said she disapproves of the funding freeze because she believes the NIH is important for healthcare research. However, Kambhampaty said she also believes the “overall problems” with the healthcare industry will remain the same regardless of funding changes. 

“A lot of medical research specifically gets heavily molecular, and it’s really fascinating to see these biomedical engineering feats, but honestly … those fancy treatments only go to help one wealthy person in the end,” Kambhampaty said. “The problem with healthcare is that most people don’t have food and access to basic healthcare and medications.”