- Alexa Vazquez & Roman Trovato | Staff
- Feb 27, 2025 (DailyCal.org)
Although litigation temporarily blocked cuts to the National Institutes of Health’s, or NIH, research funding, researchers at UC Berkeley have reported that their funds are in a state of uncertainty.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration proposed to cut overhead payments for all existing and future grants down to a 15% rate, which could cost UC Berkeley $37 million in funding.
The National Institutes of Health has suspended “almost all” grant review sections in the last month, as first reported by the scientific journal Nature.Associate professor of immunology and molecular medicine Sarah Stanley, who is also the principal investigator of Stanley Labs, serves on one such grant review section. She was informed of her meeting’s cancellation just two hours prior.
“This is an insidious procedural way of messing with the process that has just slid under the radar,” said a campus staff research associate who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation.
The NIH has three grant review and award cycles per year. According to Stanley, labs whose grants were approved last fall have not been awarded funding due to canceled council meetings.
University of California Office of the President spokesperson Stett Holbrook stated that no campus operations that rely on overhead payments from the NIH have been impacted.
Stanley’s lab is currently conducting research trials on tuberculosis infections in children. Stanley said she had three research grants scheduled for review in the current cycle, which won’t be reviewed, and thus can’t be funded this cycle.
Holbrook said the university “heard this week that (grant review sessions) will resume,” noting that it “hope(s) this restores the normal flow of NIH funding.”
According to Stanley, almost every lab in the molecular and cell biology department receives NIH funding, as well as labs in chemistry, integrative biology, natural resources and public health.
In an article published by UC Berkeley News, Vice Chancellor for Research Kathy Yelick said campus researchers are “afraid” to enroll graduate students due to funding uncertainty.
According to Stanley, although molecular and cell biology and infectious diseases and immunity Ph.D. programs are not freezing graduate admissions, it is “a choice many programs are making.”
“There’s an entire cohort of graduate students who are potentially in limbo, who might not have a lab to join, who might not be able to join a lab that they applied to university for,” the research associate said. “The main thing is there’s a lot of uncertainty in place right now.”
The research associate also expressed frustration regarding a lack of “guidance from university leadership,” stating that some administrators were unaware of the potential lack of funding dispersal.
As of press time, campus spokespeople were unavailable for comment.
“There’s going to be a massive backlog of things to work through,” the research associate said. “ A lot of labs on campus don’t know if existing labs will still be audited, if funds will still be dispersed, if grants that they have currently under review will still get scored and awarded.”
Holbrook said that they have not received any reports on a lack of funding for research, but “are aware that NIH has been unable to review research proposals.”
UC Berkeley News reported Feb. 24 that Democratic Rep. Lateefah Simon and Rep. Ted Lieu visited campus to hear from research departments and Yelick. They “vowed to contest the Trump administration’s attempts to drastically cut biomedical funding,” according to UC Berkeley News.
“My research program is so important to me, it’s my career and I’ve worked so hard for it, but I do feel like this can’t last forever,” Stanley said. “We can weather some time of not having funding to our labs, and we can rebuild again, but I don’t want to lose a generation … of students from the pipeline.”
