By Nick Hayden
Introduction.
When politicians and pundits talk about pulling federal funding from universities like Columbia and Harvard, they rarely discuss what that cutting federal funding does, or who it actually affects. As a PhD student working on autoimmune disease research, I can tell you: It doesn’t punish universities. It punishes researchers like me.
These pundits also don’t discuss how funding works. Federal research dollars are not handed over to universities; they’re awarded through a rigorous, peer-reviewed grant process to individual scientists who compete nationally for funding based on the strength of their ideas — ideas that have practically nothing to do with the university they are affiliated with. In this piece, I want to briefly explain how this process works — using a recent grant I wrote as an example — and talk about why the sudden politicization of this system poses a serious risk to the future of science and medicine in the U.S.
How NIH Funding Actually Works.
When the government has withheld federal funding to punish schools, most of what they’re withholding is federal research funding awarded to individual scientists who work independently at these schools, not to the schools themselves. I don’t work at a school that has been impacted as strongly as Columbia or Harvard, but the issue still hits home since my lab is funded entirely by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), like thousands of labs across the country, and is therefore vulnerable to these attacks.
Professors and scientists apply directly to the NIH (or one of its sub-agencies like the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), submitting detailed, peer-reviewed proposals for specific research projects. These applications are detailed and highly competitive, and some agencies have approval rates below 8%. Again: The money doesn’t fund universities. It funds specific researchers and their projects based on scientific merit, and their continued funding requires continued documentation of how prior funds are spent.
Yes, a portion of each grant (or indirect costs) is returned to the university, but that money can only be used for supporting materials like state-of-the-art research facilities, shared equipment necessary to conduct research and student training, without which science would be impossible. These costs are carefully negotiated with the federal government for each university to ensure every academic research center is only taking what it requires to provide researchers with the resources necessary to conduct their work.
What Writing an NIH Grant Actually Involves.
Last year, I wrote a grant to fund my dissertation research through an NIH predoctoral fellowship — a project that uses artificial intelligence to predict how the immune system targets healthy tissue. Fellowships like the one I applied for are designed to support promising PhD students and help train the next generation of scientists in health-related research fields. This particular award is only available to U.S. citizens, and all grants that professors write can only be awarded to scientific research happening in the U.S..
My application was 78 pages long, single-spaced with 0.5” margins, and required over a month of work to complete. Notable sections of my proposal included:
- An eight-page research plan laying out my hypothesis, its significance and two experimental aims, each with detailed methods, potential pitfalls, and alternate approaches
- A six-page training plan explaining how I would grow as a scientist, not just technically through learning specific techniques, but also through mentorship, coursework, teaching, and communicating the results of my work at conferences
- A five-page personal research history, where I described what drew me to this work, what I’ve learned from previous projects, and how this fellowship would help me move forward
- Over 10 pages of documentation of human subject research protocols, including ethical considerations, risk assessments, and statistical-power calculations for my sample sizes
- Around 10 pages describing the mentorship plans from two professors who agreed to sponsor me for this application
- Documentation of all the research instruments and lab space provided to me through my university as indirect costs
In addition to all that, my sponsors had to submit their CVs and track records — not just as researchers but as mentors — to document how other scientists they’ve trained have contributed to American medical research after leaving their labs. For the grant I applied for, my application was as much about training the next generation as it was about advancing science, the majority of applications scientists submit are solely about advancing science through a specific project.
What Happens After You Submit.
Once submitted, NIH grant applications go through peer review. A group of scientific experts, usually professors at other institutions, are selected to serve on a study section. They don’t work for the NIH and they aren’t paid in any meaningful way; they volunteer their time because, like all of us, they depend on the system and want to contribute to its integrity.
These reviewers judge applications for their potential significance and the feasibility of the proposed work. For the award I applied for, they also consider how likely they believe I am to succeed more broadly as a scientist as a result of my education, mentorship, and training plan.
Each reviewer reads the grants independently, identifies the strongest sections of an application, and meets to discuss those sections in depth. The applications are then scored, and only a small percentage of the top-scored submissions are granted funding. At the time I applied, under 15% of applicants for my award specifically were funded, a relatively less competitive rate compared to most NIH grants.
If your proposal scores well but doesn’t get funded, you receive formal feedback explaining what reviewers liked, what gave them pause, and how you might revise your application. If your application doesn’t make the top 50%, you don’t even get those comments — just a formal rejection.
In my case, the grant review process was delayed by over a month due to administrative freezes by the Trump administration that have been unprecedentedly long, meaning I missed the next reapplication deadline, of which there are just three per year. My application will probably not be accepted in this first round, but if I’m lucky enough to get reviewer comments I’ll reapply for the following cycle, assuming the system remains functional.
Conclusion.
If we’re going to have an honest public conversation about federal research funding, we need to stop speaking about this money like it’s handed to universities with no oversight or accountability because in reality, it is not even given to universities at all. Instead, it is awarded to individual researchers, through highly competitive, rigorously reviewed applications, to conduct projects that serve the public good. And yes, there are strings attached — not ones based on university politics, but ones based on scientific merit.
According to a study published 2 years ago, 354 out of the 356 drugs approved by the FDA from 2010–2019 were funded by the NIH in some capacity. The money that funded these drugs is the same money the Trump administration has decided to play politics with. When politicians freeze or revoke funding to punish universities, they’re not hurting bureaucracies of higher education.They’re hurting researchers trying to understand and treat cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and autoimmune diseases. They’re delaying the science that becomes tomorrow’s treatments and cures.
I submitted my NIH grant under the Biden administration, with no mention of politics, ideology, or campus controversies — just a focus on scientific merit. Under the Trump administration, I worry that my research could be shut down, not based on its quality, but on the politics (or perceived politics) of where I work. That’s not keeping universities accountable. That’s using lifesaving research as a hostage. The American public deserves to understand the difference.
Nick Hayden is a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.
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