National Science Foundation eliminates hundreds of grants day after director resigns

Source: USA Today

April 26, 2025, 1:17 p.m. ET


WASHINGTON – Approximately 700 scientific research projects funded through the National Science Foundation were canceled on April 25 amid scrutiny from President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency. It came the day after the agency's director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, abruptly resigned from his position, and a week after the agency cut another 400 grants touted by the Department of Government Efficiency as "wasteful DEI" funding.

Panchanathan was appointed to the lead the agency that funds non-medical scientific research during Trump's first term. Several of the canceled grants align with a 2024 report published by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz identifying projects he argued had been "politicized," according to a public list of canceled grants maintained by researchers at science nonprofit rOpenSci and Harvard University.

Among those were projects to develop an after-school program for "rural, Latinx youth" and to study online STEM learning by girls. It also cut grants that were not included in Cruz's report, like ones that would build a program for computer science students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), to make scientific conferences more accessible for people in rural areas or at small institutions, or to create a tool to identify deepfakes created by artificial intelligence.

Last week, DOGE staffers showed up at the NSF headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, multiple NSF employees told USA TODAY. A few days later, the agency announced it would adjust its priorities to eliminate awards "with more narrow impact limited to subgroups of people based on protected class or characteristics," including those related to "diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and misinformation/disinformation."

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/26/national-science-foundation-doge-cuts/83282784007/