Trump-Era Funding Cuts Driving Young Scientists From U.S. Research

Sasha Sypher, 24, is a master’s student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a department at the University of California, San Diego, that has experienced funding declines and diminishing resources.

She conducted research under a professor who wanted to keep her on as a student and gained tentative admission, contingent on funding, into the marine biology Ph.D. program at Scripps.

Ms. Sypher set her sights on the N.S.F. research fellowship. But the agency abruptly changed its eligibility requirements last year, rendering students beyond their first year of graduate school no longer eligible to apply. Ms. Sypher was in her second year. “There was just no warning,” she said.

In a statement to the Times, the N.S.F. said the update to eligibility criteria for its graduate research fellowship was “designed to expand opportunities for students entering graduate school” for the first time, and to restore “the program’s original emphasis on supporting students at the start of their research careers.”

New Ph.D. enrollments at Scripps dropped from 47 incoming students to 38, or by 19 percent, between 2024 and 2025, according to enrollment data provided by the institute.

This fall, Scripps had just 19 new Ph.D. students. The declines were a result of funding uncertainty, according to the institute.

“I’m hoping that my adviser will secure funding,” said Ms. Sypher, who has extended her master’s program for an additional year and is now considering a career in industry or public policy. “But I’m definitely not going to bank on that happening any time soon.”

Hannah Hyland, 23, was a neuroscience research assistant at Columbia University in 2025 when the first waves of grant terminations were announced by the Trump administration.

The school saw $400 million in federal grants and contracts canceled for what the administration said was a failure of the university to protect Jewish students from harassment. The funding was restored months later after the university struck a deal with the government — but, for Ms. Hyland, the chaos was unnerving.

“I witnessed firsthand how quickly that could spiral within an institution,” she said. “As someone who was at the low end of the chopping block, it was scary.”

So later that fall, when Ms. Hyland decided to apply for Ph.D. programs, she chose to look abroad. She connected with a professor at McGill University in Montreal, who promised her a spot in the school’s neuroscience graduate program. As a result, Ms. Hyland applied to only one U.S. program; she made it to the final round and was ultimately rejected.

Months after accepting an offer from McGill, Ms. Hyland learned that she had won the coveted N.S.F. graduate research fellowship. Students often use these funds to leverage admissions at universities that initially rejected them.

But the fellowship supports only those students who pursue their Ph.D. in the United States. And Ms. Hyland was ready to put the uncertain political climate of her home country behind her. So she turned down the N.S.F. funding, enrolled at McGill as a master’s student and expects to transition into its Ph.D. program. She receives an annual living stipend from the Canadian government equivalent to about $17,000 in U.S. dollars — less than the annual $37,000 stipend the N.S.F. had offered.

“I was definitely more drawn to leaving the U.S. to pursue my studies in a more stable and supportive country,” Ms. Hyland said.

Like many Ph.D. students, Quinn Beato, 25, was told that having more research experience would make him a stronger applicant for the N.S.F. fellowship. So Mr. Beato, who works on developing new types of biosensors for chronic disease at Northwestern University, waited until his second year to apply.

Last fall he spent weeks preparing his application, then learned that he was no longer eligible as a second-year graduate student. “That’s when I really started panicking,” he said.

Months earlier, Mr. Beato’s research had temporarily slowed after the Trump administration froze millions of dollars in funding at Northwestern amid investigations of antisemitism and racial discrimination at the university. Enrollment of new Ph.D. students in Mr. Beato’s biomedical engineering program also dropped significantly last year, despite a substantial increase in applications.

This summer, the U.S. Department of Defense updated restrictions that forbid researchers funded by the agency from collaborating with international colleagues at certain institutions. As his lab is partially funded by the agency, Mr. Beato has been discouraged from working with a collaborator at a Chinese university on the restriction list. His collaborator had collected preliminary data for a project to develop “smart” contact lenses to monitor dry eye disease, research that Mr. Beato said was integral to his dissertation.

He is unsure how to move forward with the study without his collaborator. “Do I take credit for work that isn’t mine?” he said. “Or do I ditch this project that I’ve been working on?”

The experience has deterred him from academia. He now plans to pursue a career in science communication and policy work.

“I see what it takes to be a professor,” Mr. Beato said. “I don’t want that anymore.”

Elle Rathbun, 30, has wanted to be a brain scientist since middle school. Seventeen years later, she is finishing a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is well positioned to continue her studies in academia. But after she finishes her degree, Ms. Rathbun is planning to enroll in an M.B.A. program to build a career with more stability.

“Morale has just reached a really sad low,” she said.

When the Trump administration slashed U.C.L.A.’s federal grants in 2025, Ms. Rathbun’s research project, which focused on a biomaterial that is injected into the brain after a stroke, was suspended. Like many scientists, she learned of her grant’s cancellation through news reports.

Her research was restarted two months later after a federal judge rescinded Mr. Trump’s suspensions, but the stress and uncertainty left her questioning what she wanted to do with her life.

“Ph.D. research is so dependent on the self-motivation of the researcher,” Ms. Rathbun said. “It was incredibly disheartening. How do you convince yourself it’s worth working 60 hours, 80 hours a week when the entirety of your career is being threatened?”

India Jackson, 40, a solar physicist in Atlanta, earned her Ph.D. in astrophysics in 2024 from Georgia State University. She expected to begin a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the same institution, funded by the N.S.F., in early 2025. Freezes and cuts to federal funding delayed that opportunity by four months, she said.

With her fellowship ending this December, Dr. Jackson is now on the job market. In addition to a Ph.D., she holds three master’s degrees, in physics, mathematics and computer science. She has completed internships at several NASA centers, and has extensive experience building software to study solar activity and predict space weather.

“None of that matters,” she said. “Because I don’t have a job.”

Dr. Jackson has started to apply for jobs in the private sector, although she still hopes to secure a professorship. She’s recently taken on part-time teaching work.

But as for research faculty positions, Dr. Jackson said, “I’m having a hard time even securing an interview.”

Running a lab, says Krishna Mudumbi, 44, is like operating a small business: You need a constant flow of revenue (grants) to make multiyear hiring commitments to your employees (doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers).

And so Dr. Mudumbi, a molecular biophysicist, has been stressed about money from the moment he started as an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University in 2025. The Trump administration ended an N.I.H. grant that provided about $500,000 of Dr. Mudumbi’s start-up package. He had earmarked that money for a microscope crucial to his research into how cells communicate with each other.

Vanderbilt provided Dr. Mudumbi with the lost funds, a luxury that some universities can’t afford. But his financial anxieties remain as he builds out his lab and tries to keep it afloat.

“Not knowing if federal money will keep coming in is a huge psychological barrier to get past when you’re thinking about hiring graduate students, postdocs or technicians,” he said.