A year after a cold front of federal mandates threatened to freeze scientific research, spring has brought a cautious thaw to university labs.
Last February, as part of a broader effort to cull government spending, the Trump administration eliminated thousands of workers at key federal science agencies including NASA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) — entities and programs NKU researchers rely on to fund student lab work.
The administration also canceled or delayed research grants, proposed significant cuts to overhead and infrastructure funding for university labs, and rescinded awards deemed related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
The ensuing lawsuits have since rattled through the courts with federal judges rebuffing many of the more drastic policy changes. On Feb. 3, nearly a year after the initial executive orders, President Donald Trump signed an expansive bipartisan funding package that included a modest increase in funding for the NIH and only slight decreases for NASA and the NSF — suggesting an ebb to the political permafrost.
“It’s a little bit calmer now, but we don’t know what’s coming next,” said Dr. Madhura Kulkarni, director of NKU’s Center for Integrative Natural Science and Mathematics, also known as CINSAM.
The Center serves as NKU’s internal apparatus for university-sponsored research, and receives grants from national institutes like the NSF. As part of its process as a funding pipeline, CINSAM annually collects proposals from faculty for the next fiscal year. This past round, only two proposals were received for the next stage of review by the Nov. 14 deadline, down from an approximate average of seven.
“It takes a ton of time to put together an NSF or NIH proposal,” Kulkarni said, “You’re coordinating across a bunch of people, and there’s a ton of documents you have to submit, so people don’t want to put in all that time when they have no idea what’s going to happen next.”
Other faculty have echoed that sentiment. One researcher who spoke with The Northerner described a situation in which a federal grant was awarded just days before the program associated with it was discontinued by the federal administration.
This has left an overall feeling of instability.
“I mean, I just feel like we’ve been chasing moving targets the past year, really,” said Dr. Brittany Smith, an NKU assistant professor and psychological science researcher. “People are just clinging on.”
NKU is classified as a primarily undergraduate institution (PUI), which means many of the lab-intensive programs have no post-graduate track, and research is largely conducted by undergraduate students. Unlike doctoral universities with heavy research activities (R1), like the University of Kentucky or the University of Louisville, which receive large amounts of federal funding, NKU relies on independence of the individual faculty and an administrative department called Research Grants and Contracts, to find and secure federal funding.
Many of these are NIH R15 and R16 grants, specifically geared toward primarily undergraduate institutions like NKU, where the faculty and researchers have what Smith described as “pretty intensive teaching appointments relative to other institutions.”
“So [it’s] not just hiring full-time staff, and having a postdoc do everything. For the R15 and R16, they want to see the students helping with the work,” Smith said.
Several of NKU’s biomedical grants come from the Institute Development Award (IDeA) program, which aims to build support and increase research capacity at public universities in states with historically lower rates of funding from the NIH. NKU’s biomedical researchers are largely supported through the IDeA program’s network, convolutedly named KY INBRE: the IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence.
“[The NIH] loves an acronym,” said Dr. Lauren Williamson, who researches psychoneuroimmunology.
“[KY INBRE] grants are sometimes called NIH flow-through grants. As in: that’s [still] an NIH grant— a very large one … The NIH requires that an R1 institution [such as the University of Louisville] be the steward of something like an INBRE, partially because of the budget, and partially because they have more infrastructure to deal with grants than a smaller university.”
Although currently safe from direct federal cuts, KY INBRE still operates under the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), one of the 27 centers and institutes that make up a rapidly thinning NIH. According to the weekly international scientific journal, “Nature,” the NIGMS is on track to have no voting advisory members by the end of the year. Its yearly March meeting was also canceled, with the NIH saying it would not be rescheduled.
Dr. Mark Bardgette is NKU’s lead faculty member in the KY INBRE program, as well as a professor and researcher.
“I have a lot of students that aren’t being paid [directly by grants] but are getting course credit for being engaged in research,” Bardgette said. “If I don’t have research funding, I can’t engage those students in research. And to me, [research is] the ultimate form of learning.”
Laboratories like NKU’s animal testing and cadaver lab are also the foundation of NKU’s research infrastructure in a literal sense. Lab maintenance covers the expensive upkeep of specialized equipment and new materials, as well as everyday items such as refrigeration, custodial services and electricity. These fall under what’s known as “indirect costs,” sections of a grant’s funding reserved for structural support for the research being conducted, from administrative costs to zoological care.
Last February, one of the executive orders proposed capping indirect costs at 15% of awarded grant money — a reduction from the previous average of 25%, with some grants reaching as high as 40%. This February’s funding package ultimately preserved existing indirect cost structures, preventing what could have been a devastating blow to research infrastructure at larger institutions. Many researchers credited NKU’s commitment towards shouldering these costs, meaning the impact would have been partially cushioned by the university.
“I think NKU feels comfortable paying for … indirect funds [because] all the research we do, heavily involves or impacts students,” Bardgette said. “I don’t think there’s a project that occurs on campus here out of the neuroscience program or the psychology or biology departments, where it’s just the primary investigator doing something on their own, which is the case in other R1 universities.”
The federal averages for funding indirect costs staying the same can also be considered too little when faced with a science equipment market that is facing higher prices.
“The NIH budget has been mostly shrinking over the last 30 years,” Williamson said. “At different amounts and percentages, but it’s been generally being cut. And that’s true of the NSF as well, and the investment in NASA.”
“And what we’re buying from companies to do our science becomes more and more expensive …. So to do the research is just more expensive, period.”
Dr. Kristy Hopfensperger, director of NKU’s environmental science program, further described the relentless process from the side of NSF funding, “So the grants are tricky because it’s a huge amount of work to write a federal proposal, and it’s nearly impossible to do that during the semester when you’re teaching four classes. And seed grants like EPSCoR [Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research], the way it works is, if you don’t apply for those, or get a publication out of your work, they won’t fund you again.”
Many of the grants and fellowships CINSAM awards are known as seed grants, meaning the funding is intended to support research aimed at securing another federal grant.
“We took this small NKU grant and got the smallest of the NIH grants, which is called an R03, to get more preliminary data, which we’ll use then to write the bigger grant, the R15,” explained Dr. Christine Curran, professor of biological sciences and director of NKU’s neuroscience program. “That’s the scaffolding … Every grant should lead to another grant.”
This makes the new federal guidelines and standards a lexical minefield, with several NKU researchers walking a blade-thin line to protect themselves from cuts, and tempering their language in proposals and public-facing websites. One researcher who spoke to The Northerner shared they no longer record team meetings in anticipation of increased scrutiny.
“What’s really clear is: do not write words like ‘environmental justice’ into your grant. Do not write ‘minorities,’ or ‘underserved,’” Curran said, describing the new round of reviews for proposals, in which political appointees can flag a proposal as not aligned with federal funding standards. “The list of words, that’s really difficult.”
Some professors are rethinking the guidance they give their students based on this research climate.
“If I’m advising students now who are really interested in this, yeah, look at the U.S., but also consider other countries, especially in Europe, because in the long term their scientific infrastructure seems to be a lot more robust right now,” Dr. Rick Boyce, professor and researcher of biological science, said. “It’s not being politically influenced.”
Hopfensperger had a claimed a more moderate view.
“For environmental science students overall, I’ve completely changed from advising towards government jobs. Federal government jobs in the past were always really secure, amazing careers. They paid well, had good benefits and stability, and that’s been flipped upside down and gutted. They’ve gutted environmental work. So that was a really great place to land in the past, and it’s not anymore. And so it’s more about helping students find those other opportunities.”
NKU also promotes its science programs by highlighting student involvement, saying, “undergraduate research has become one of the defining characteristics” of its STEM departments. Many students credit their time in the lab with their development as scientists.
“[The changes would] make it kind of difficult for students to even get their foot off the ground when dealing with research,” said Daysha Fox, a student who works in a lab under CINSAM’s paid UR-STEM summer program. “Not just get a foot in the door, but off the ground.”
“For me, [UR-STEM] helps because I don’t have to get an off-campus job,” she said. “It also opens up opportunities, because we do a lot of conferences and a lot of scientific events. It opens up opportunities for networking for your future.”
Despite the current unpredictability, the moment reflects something fundamental within science itself. Uncertainty has always fueled scientific research. While funding unknowns are unwelcome, they can also provide researchers with a chance to pivot.
Dr. Ankur Chattopadhyay is the director of NKU’s Center of Information Security, as well as a professor who regularly works with the NSF and NSA. His NSF I-Corps grant was among those cancelled last February. The I-Corps grant, meant to generate research for future commercial innovation, had aimed to build an authentication trust model for health information online. It was pulled during the contract process for the five student researchers who would have been assisting with the project.
By then, Chattopadhyay had already completed much of the research and development for the project, including 120 interviews as part of the program’s strict deadline.
“Most of [the money] had to be returned … But nobody can rescind research, nobody can rescind data,” he said.
Instead of abandoning the project, Chattopadhyay secured funding from Kentucky Commercialization Ventures, shifting the focus to online health assurance for pets. The students who had not already graduated made the transition with him.
“It’s not [completely] bleak to me,” Chattopadhyay said, explaining, “It made me rethink the project. I consider myself fortunate to work in these communities and industries who said ‘let us know how we can help.’”
This diversification, Chattopadhyay believes, will become essential as the federal research funding becomes more competitive for higher education institutions like NKU.
“The time has come for higher education, faculty, researchers to build our place within industry,” he said, pointing to the history of local partners, and patrons and donors at NKU’s Center of Informatics as a model.
Because many of NKU’s grants are focused on individual researchers rather than departments, professors can also face scrutiny as individuals as well, with fewer protections. Several faculty members declined to speak to ““The Northerner””, citing concerns of professional and personal repercussions. Some researchers who did speak said they were advised against talking to the media.
This is a pattern that’s shared beyond NKU’s campus. In May 2025, University of Kentucky’s student newspaper, Kentucky Kernel, reported that UK researchers had been instructed not to speak to the media about NIH cuts.
“Oh, without question [there’s hesitancy about speaking out],” Boyce said, “A lot of people are just hunkering down, you know, especially if they’re doing research in an area that they think might get cut. You know, nobody wants to stand up and speak out on that, because they’re afraid they’re going to get singled out, and their funding is going to get yanked.”
That’s one reason Curran feels the need to use her voice.
“And I mean, who doesn’t want to cure cancer? Who doesn’t want their children to be healthy and born without a birth defect? [My research] is personal for me. I have a cousin, an older sister and a younger brother who are all diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Well, there’s probably a genetic component. There’s probably an environmental component. Let’s go figure it out before the next generation gets hit. That’s not controversial to me. That’s common sense.”
This story originally appeared at thenortherner.com.