Since the Trump administration froze $1.5 billion in National Institute of Health (NIH) funding, students, researchers and universities have scrambled to adjust. While the NIH announced a partial lifting of funding on Feb. 24, the future of research is still in limbo.

In Massachusetts, 5,396 research institutions — including hospitals, medical schools, companies and universities — are estimated to lose $535 million in funding, as the NIH is a primary source of federal funding for medical research in the U.S.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst, with over 100 grants, received $38 million in funding in 2024 and faces an estimated loss of $6 million. Research impacted by these funding cuts ranges from research on early detection of Alzheimer’s disease to the effect of ambient air pollution on men’s reproductive health.

In addition, as of Feb. 10, indirect costs of research —  covering expenses related to operations and maintenance of research facilities, research administration staff, lab safety and hazardous waste management and other infrastructure related expenditures — will be capped at 15 percent for all current and new grants at all institutions.

In response to these funding cuts, UMass announced a new Research Continuity Emergency (ResCoE) Matching Fund, which aims to provide a one-to-one match for funds to support research. These funds are available immediately and ResCoE has a projected end date of Aug. 31, which is subject to change.

“The university’s scholarly and research community is one of our greatest strengths,” the University wrote in a press release on March 12. “Our highest priority in addressing this uncertainty is to support those community members whose livelihoods are put at risk by the interruption of federal funding: graduate students, postdocs, research staff and research faculty whose salaries are directly charged to federal grants and contracts.”

Mirabella Paolucci, a senior public health major, has felt the uncertainty. As a part of the 4+1 public health program at UMass, she planned to get her master’s of public health (MPH) in epidemiology. Part of the program involves an MPH practicum,  requiring her to get an internship for hands-on experience.

Paolucci looked into many research internships starting in the fall semester, but so far, two of them have been cancelled. One internship at the Washington Center through the Center for Disease Control (CDC) was cancelled shortly after the executive orders went out. Another internship through Brigham and Women’s Hospital was cancelled due to funding issues, according to Paolucci.

“I know that like students, including me, put a lot of work into them, but it’s also just sort of unsettling,” Paolucci said. “Especially going right into the … workforce after I get my MPH and hearing about these programs become discontinued because … there’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding … research and science right now.”

She says that the difficulty of finding research opportunities makes her consider other positions outside of research.

“It definitely makes me feel like I don’t have job security after I graduate, which is really unfortunate. I know a lot of the people in my 4 plus 1 program … they’re kind of feeling the same way,” Paolucci said. “I just feel like there’s … a threat to not only research, but just science in general and the validity of science. And that’s sort of what public health revolves around.”

Addie Beckert, a senior natural resource conservation major, has also been grappling with how federal funding cuts may impact a future research career.

As a graduating senior, she was looking into career paths that would give her the opportunity to care for the environment. Last summer, she was hired as an intern working on research papers dealing with energy poverty where she conducted and verified surveys, worked with the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Forest Service and conducted some technical research.

She heard about the recent executive orders and their impact on research, but she didn’t think it would directly affect her, until she received an email from her workplace saying that for those seeking more job security, they would not be penalized for seeking a job elsewhere.

“I had been hearing a lot about the executive orders and … their impact on research in the news. And it was kind of one of those things that … is scary, and you hear about it,” Beckert said. “But then … I was like, ‘oh, I don’t think that that would directly affect me.’ And then we got that email, and … it’s one of those things that starts to hit close to home.”

The halt on research means that progress is not being made in fields that need it most. “We’re reverting back in time and in a lot of ways we’re losing time on things that really matter,” Beckert said.

In addition to federal funding cuts for the NIH, other research, including environmental science research, has been impacted. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced eliminating its scientific research office, the Office of Research and Development. The office has 1,540 employees, excluding special government employees and public health officers.

According to documents reviewed by Democratic staff on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, the EPA may fire as many as 1,155 scientists to eliminate 65 percent of its budget. This research centers on pollution, the impact of fracking on drinking water, the impact of wildfire smoke on public health and climate change.

“I’ve dedicated four years of my education here at UMass to learning about the environment, finding solutions for the climate crisis … I’ve learned the scientific backing of why climate change is happening, why it matters and the real implications it’s having,” Beckert said. “And I think it’s a little scary to me that it’s suddenly become a political thing, whether it’s something you believe in or you don’t rather than something that’s actually happening.”

Beckert wanted to work for the EPA for a long time, but feels that “on more of an individual level, the job uncertainty is a little scary” and pushed her away from research.

Faculty also face tough decisions with the cuts to research funding. Martin Hunter, a senior lecturer in the Biomedical Engineering Department, relies on funding to continue research projects in renewable energy and sustainability.

Hunter currently has a $30,000 grant from the USDA, which he wanted to extend. This grant supports his project in community biogas, which aims to make energy out of waste to fuel small farms. It helps Hunter pay for salaries, consultants, some equipment and fund summer internships for students.

Hunter says he wouldn’t have been able to do this project with this grant.

When the USDA sent out a call for a big grant of $125,000 that would fit with his research, Hunter applied. But this grant required cost-share, which is when the government gives the recipient some money but requires them to come up with the rest of it.

For Hunter, the cost share was 20 to 25 percent. He says that he was lucky to get a $15,000 grant from the University’s Institute of Diversity Sciences (IDS), which he used to contribute to the cost-share.

“I bring this up because just to show you how the impact of this whole war on diversity stuff is going to have on people [in] my work,” Hunter said. “So, if the IDS wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have had the possibility to do the cost share, so I wouldn’t have even been able to apply to the USDA grant. So there’s a whole web of connections that, when you start tearing the web down … the whole system starts crumbling.”

Hunter emphasized that researchers have spent entire careers working on their projects, and that funding cuts have a large impact on their livelihoods.

“You close down the NIH, and it’s … gonna be a huge ripple effect,” Hunter said. “I’ve been in America since I [was] 18 … and I came here to study in college and I … stayed and I went to grad school. I’ve always worked in university.”

“One of the things I see is that the U.S. still is one of the top places for research in the world, and one of the ways you see that is I look out the door and half the people are foreigners,” Hunter said. ”Why is that happening? Because America has a lot of resources and the infrastructure to do really good research. If you start messing with that … people are going to go somewhere else. It’s going to be a ripple downward effect.”

Grace Chai can be reached at [email protected].