Researchers at GW said President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash federally funded research last month have put their studies in a state of limbo.

The National Institutes of Health — which reported spending $32 billion on research grants to universities, medical schools and other research institutions in fiscal year 2024 — said early last month that it would cap coverage for universities’ overhead and administrative costs at 15 percent — down from an average of roughly 30 percent. As the University joins a lawsuit against the NIH in response to the cuts, GW researchers said the culture of uncertainty created by the looming funding cuts has lowered morale, disrupted ongoing projects and stalled applications for new research to receive grants.

The proposed cuts — which a federal judge temporarily blocked last month — come after a flurry of executive actions by Trump’s administration aimed at higher education research funding, including a directive flagging research grants with words like “diversity” and “trans” and a memo blocking public announcements of grant review meetings.

Mark Edberg — a professor of prevention and community health who has two NIH-funded projects about gun violence prevention among youth and the health effects of historical trauma on Indigenous populations — said despite the lack of immediate halts in funding, uncertainty will directly affect research on health outcomes in communities, like his work regarding Indigenous populations, since researchers cannot guarantee the people they are working with that their research will continue to be funded.

“When you create instability in funding, a lack of predictability, all of those things, you not only disrupt what the research is going to do itself, but the relationships that are necessary to carry out that research,” Edberg said. 

In FY2024, the NIH spent $9 billion on “indirect” funding for research grants, which covered costs of maintaining laboratories, administrative staffing, utility bills and other overhead expenses that researchers said are essential to keep projects running. GW tallied 126 NIH grants in FY2024 totaling $79 million and would lose an estimated $10 million in research funding from the cuts.

University President Ellen Granberg and other officials said on Feb. 11 the cuts were “arbitrary and capricious” and would strip students of “valuable learning opportunities.” About 82 percent of GW research funding can be attributed to federal sources in FY2024. 

Edberg said the University’s decision to join the lawsuit against the NIH was a “no-brainer” because researchers will be unable to continue their work with the possibility of disruptions and uncertainty over the future of funding.

There is no immediate impact of the indirect funding cuts due to the temporary block, he said, but many researchers at GW are still concerned that federal agencies will flag their research as relating to DEI and lose funding due to Trump’s review of research surrounding those topics. 

“There’s a lot of consternation, a lot of concern over the future of the research enterprise and even with the grants that I have, as well as with grants that other people have, we do not know the long-term picture for those grants,” Edberg said. 

Following the halt on grant review panel announcements on the Federal Register ordered by the Department of Health and Human Services on Feb. 7, the NIH canceled dozens of panels, delaying funding for NIH-funded projects in an effort by the Trump administration to circumvent a judge’s order blocking the freeze on federal funds last month. 

According to the Federal Register website, no panel meetings have been posted since January 21, which has reportedly stalled 16,000 grant applications and placed $1.5 billion of funding in limbo. 

Tony Yang, a professor of health policy and management at the Milken Institute School of Public Health who has four NIH-funded projects regarding vaccine uptake and cannabis policies, said the “lack of transparency” regarding federal grant reviews will make it harder for researchers to prepare their applications for funding.

“Blocking this information injects unpredictability into the funding cycle, forcing researchers to work without a clear timeline, which could lead to missed opportunities and gaps in funding continuity,” Yang said in an email. 

Yang said the order flagging words in research grants related to DEI is “deeply concerning” because many public health research projects study equity in health care access and outcomes, which could lead to funding cuts for projects about racial inequities and vaccine access like his project.

“Targeting grants that include terms like ‘diversity’ or ‘ethnicity’ signals a shift toward politicizing funding decisions,” Yang said. “If such grants are deprioritized, critical research addressing racial health inequities, vaccine access, and disease prevention in marginalized communities could be severely affected.”

Murray Loew, a professor of biomedical engineering who is currently applying for NIH funding for one of his projects, said researchers at GW and at other universities are hoping court orders and ongoing lawsuits will lead to the withdrawal of these orders, but researchers are currently “pessimistic” about the future of their projects. 

“Certainly, researchers are upset about the status of their own work and about what the implications might be for the future,” Loew said. “Some people have become very despondent and just want to give up everything.” 

Loew said flagging words like “diversity” in research grants is “Orwellian,” as a blanket ban does not consider the varying contexts of those words.

“Our best ideas come from a diversity of people and to say that we’re not interested or at least not vocally encouraging this diversity is damaging,” Loew said. “So no matter how you look at it, whether it’s just superficially on the extraction of words or from the deeper implications, it’s dangerous.” 

Loew said he knows of faculty members within GW Engineering whose proposals have been reviewed by the NIH but are uncertain about when or if their project will reach the next stages in being approved due to the halts on review announcements.

“Certainly, researchers are upset about the status of their own work and about what the implications might be for the future,” Loew said. “Some people have become very despondent and just want to give up everything.” 

Donaldson Conserve, an associate professor of prevention and community health who is working on NIH-funded projects regarding HIV self-testing, said he is “grateful” the University is joining legal actions combating the cuts. He said he is worried that upcoming projects he is applying to get grants for won’t get funded and is “bracing for impact” due to uncertainty about his projects and others. 

“We are just all now navigating the situation to the best that we can and coping with the frustration that these different cuts have caused,” Conserve said.