The Hidden Toll of the Funding Pause: How Federal Delays Are Disrupting Scientists and Their Careers

Fear is growing within the scientific community as major federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Energy (DOE), and National Science Foundation (NSF), temporarily suspend grant review panels and funding processes. These abrupt cancellations, with no clear timeline for rescheduling, are raising alarms about delays in critical research and the potential long-term impacts on the training of the next generation of scientists.

Submitting proposals to federal funding agencies is a lengthy process that often takes months or years. Grant review panels, made up of external experts, decide which projects receive funding from budgets like NIH’s $47.4 billion and NSF’s $9 billion. Recent suspensions have disrupted these crucial meetings, which are planned well in advance and challenging to reschedule due to the reviewers' demanding schedules. This disruption will extend the funding timeline, delaying financial support for professors and students relying on these grants to advance their research.

Ripple Effects: Long-Term Ramifications of Funding Delays

In addition to the immediate disruption, these meeting suspension has broader implications for the entire research ecosystem. Researchers across various scientific fields rely heavily on federal funding not only for their projects but also to support graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Ashley Juavinett, Ph.D., and Cat Hicks, Ph.D., professors at the University of California San Diego, discussed the long-term ramifications of the NIH’s pause on their podcast Change, Technically. Both experts emphasized that many graduate students and postdocs depend on stipends funded by federal agencies to cover their living expenses while they focus on their research.

Growing anxiety is spreading throughout the academic community, with many undergraduate seniors voicing concerns as they await decisions on their graduate school applications. They fear that the temporary funding pause may lead professors or Principal Investigators (PIs) to hesitate in accepting new students due to the uncertainty surrounding research budgets.

Graduate students seeking postdoctoral positions are also feeling the ripple effects. One public health student recounted being turned down for a postdoc role by a professor who cited the funding freeze as the primary reason. The professor explained that, given the current unpredictability, they couldn’t guarantee financial support for new hires in the lab.

Postdocs in the faculty job market face even greater challenges. PIs are often required to allocate a portion of their federal grant funding—ranging from 10% to 60%, depending on the institution—to cover overhead costs. These funds, used for administrative expenses, facility maintenance, and other operational needs, are a major income source for universities. Many fear that a prolonged funding pause could prompt institutions to tighten their budgets, potentially resulting in fewer faculty job openings.

Newly appointed faculty members are bracing for uncertainty, strategizing ways to stretch their start-up funding—the initial resources provided by universities to help professors establish their labs before securing federal grants. Meanwhile, mid-career faculty are increasingly anxious as their start-up funds dwindle, leaving them reliant on federal grants to sustain their graduate students and postdocs.

Juavinett expressed concern about how delays in grant funding could hinder the careers of these emerging scientists, even for those pursuing careers outside academia. "We have many friends who are now working in industry at companies like Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer. And guess where those people were trained? They were trained at universities on federal funding," Juavinett said in the podcast. "And I've seen people leave science because they can't get the next round of funding, and that is something that happens.”

Timeline of Agency Suspensions

On January 20, 2025, DOE temporarily stopped issuing documents and public communications. A January 21 memo from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) prompted the NIH to take similar action, halting its own issuance of documents and public communications until Feb 1, 2025. On January 27, 2025, the NSF announced the cancellation of all grant review panels scheduled for the week as it worked to align its grantmaking processes with new executive orders from the Trump administration, according to NPR. These disruptions, coupled with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) earlier suspension of all grant-related actions, highlight a growing crisis for federally funded research and the next generation of scientists relying on these programs.