Since taking office, the Trump administration has made it a goal to cut federal spending, focusing on what they have labeled as “wasteful” initiatives. However, funding cuts by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been disproportionately targeting research related to marginalized communities: LGBTQIA+; Chicanx populations; women of color; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and more.
The University of California system is a major grant recipient for the NIH — with UC Los Angeles, UC San Francisco and UC San Diego being the top three UCs that receive NIH funding. Notable UC research funded by the NIH includes research for the first flu vaccine, the first radiation treatment for a wide variety of cancers and more.
Miya Barnett, a licensed clinical psychologist as well as an associate professor and director of clinical training in the Department of Counseling, Clinical & School Psychology at UCSB, mentioned that, although UC Santa Barbara is not one of the major recipients of NIH grants among the UCs, the university still benefits from millions of dollars of grants funding research. The most notable departments at UCSB that receive funding are biochemistry, chemistry and all engineering departments, with biochemistry receiving the most. From 1985 to 2024, researchers from UCSB received a total of $532,529,494 from NIH, according to NIH RePORTER.
Barnett explained the role of principal investigators (PIs) in academic research and how collaborative funding structures often extend beyond a single institution. According to Barnett, sometimes there are multiple PIs, which means they share funding. In her case, she was the primary recipient of the grant, but the funding was split with a colleague from a university. This shows how the NIH grants don’t showcase the indirect funding of other universities.
Barnett added that, even when examining NIH funding data, it is difficult to understand the full scope of research collaborations.
“Even just looking at NIH data and seeing where their funding was and wasn’t cut, it doesn’t even begin to show the little subprojects and collaborations between universities because academia is very collaborative,” Barnett said.
Barnett explained that UCSB has one of the lowest amounts of NIH funding because it lacks a medical school.
Barnett said that NIH grants are important to researchers because the money invested in research ultimately comes back in the form of better public health.
“Grants really provide us the way to support our participants and all of the effort it takes to be able to administer, run studies and make sure that they’re provided [and] shared with the whole community. So [for] research, the NIH actually has a huge return on investment,” Barnett said. “The health of the nation comes back to it, and it’s really important to continue.”
While faculty researchers like Barnett navigate funding uncertainties, graduate students are also experiencing the effects. Michael Keith, a doctoral candidate in mathematics at UCSB, studies the complex structures within viruses and relies on grant-funded programs for support.
“I work on modeling the interactions between DNA and ions inside of a virus, so in this particular virus — we look at the bacteriophage, which is a virus that infects bacteria — we’re trying to understand how different ionic concentrations affect the conformation of the DNA inside,” Keith said.
By supporting graduate researchers like Keith, NIH grants help foster breakthroughs that contribute to broader scientific knowledge and innovation.
“These are large advances in knowledge, and I think that that’s, in and of itself, very important on its own. But, it also leads us to new discoveries in other areas that are going to help us figure out cures for different diseases or different ways of thinking about how the universe works,” Keith said.
With many ongoing court cases against the administration, including Thakur v. Trump, a class action lawsuit representing UC researchers whose grants were suspended or terminated, many of the affected research grants are now being reinstated. As of Oct. 31, 2025, a majority of the NIH grants that were cut have been reinstated, but the remaining grants are being held until the government has appropriate funds for the next year. 5,464 grants currently are still affected, while 2,860 have been reinstated across the country as of Nov. 3, 2025.
Grants with project titles that contain terms related to DEI, such as “Sexual minority,” “Minority men” and “Gender affirming,” had a high likelihood of being terminated.
Out of the 19 times that the words “minority men” were in the project title, all 19 had their project titles cut.
Barnett said that she had never seen grants cut due to the presence of specific terms of topics.
“This is completely unprecedented. NIH never has taken away grants for ideological reasons in the past. And it’s very, very, very rare that anyone would ever lose the grant … These are definitely scary and unprecedented times,” Barnett said.
During April, the NIH had approximately $40 million terminated. However, after many lawsuits against the administration, roughly $38 million of those grants have been restored, leaving only 5% of the previously $40 million still frozen. However, most of the remaining funds are still under review for reinstatement.
For graduate researchers like Keith, whose work often depends on these grants indirectly through teaching or departmental funding, many have to look toward other means of funding.
“[Researchers] usually have funding from [the National Science Foundation (NSF)] or NIH, but there were some issues with that this past year because of the cuts of the funding, so they’ve been working on applying for other grants,” Keith said.
Barnett said that the consequences of the NIH funding cuts are wide-ranging, influencing faculty research, student training and community engagement.
“I think it’s hard to quantify how much UCSB stands to lose. I mean, we lost, on our grant, close to half a million dollars … With every grant cut, we also lose time for the faculty who spent, you know, sometimes years writing the grant, the training opportunities for the graduate students and the impact that it can make on our community,” Barnett said. “So I think that the cost to UCSB is greater even than the amount of money that’s being lost.”
Keith explained that grant funding directly impacts how much time graduate students can dedicate to research versus teaching.
“How it works is that we have to [work as a teaching assistant (TA)], and that pays us money. But it also takes a large amount of time out of the week and throughout the academic year, and if you have funding that pays for the tuition and also that pays for your stipend or your salary, then that means you don’t have to teach during that academic year. So then it essentially buys out your responsibilities as being a TA,” Keith said.
Keith’s experience reflects the uncertainty many graduate students are feeling with the changing research funding. Barnett offers a message of encouragement for current and future graduate students navigating this period of instability.
“This hopefully is just a temporary phase in research, and there’s been other times where certain topics have been censored in the past and … the research has continued forward. I think that it’s important for students to remember that, at the end of this time, we’re going to need people who are bright and excited and willing to bring science back,” Barnett said.
Following the reinstatement of the majority of NIH grants for UCs over the summer, the Daily Nexus spoke to Barnett about the reinstatement process and its effects on her research.
“The grant was fully reinstated and activities resumed as of August, so we have been able to have access to our funds and continue research activities,” Barnett said.
Barnett added that, despite the funding’s return, the disruption had slowed her research progress.
“We had three months without our funding, and we had to do all of the administrative work to stop the grant and then also restart it. So it’s definitely been burdensome, but we’re grateful that the work continues.”
When asked whether she fears future cuts, Barnett emphasized that there is still uncertainty surrounding federal funding.
“It feels like anything could be happening as we run this grant. We are just trying to stay true to the mission of what we want to do … making sure we’re supporting our participants as much as we can and planning for the future but recognizing that [the adminstration is] at this point [defunding research]. It does not ever feel like there’s a guarantee on what will happen next,” Barnett said.
Keith shared concerns about the future of graduate students under ongoing funding uncertainty and worrying about how it could impact job prospects.
“Definitely the word ‘uncertain’ comes to mind because if they’re cutting these things, then what does that mean for job prospects in the future?” Keith said. “So certainly it makes you wonder how long these things are going to last, how difficult it will be like getting a job later on and then also finding the resources to be able to conduct the research that we’re trying to do,” Keith said.
Keith questioned whether cutting funding is truly worth the cost when it results in stifled innovation and wasted potential.
“It’s just really sad to see all this creativity and this knowledge being sort of pushed aside because of some financial reason. How much money is it saving the government that we have to have these funding cuts?” Keith said. “It sucks to see that people who have the talent and the skills can’t utilize them effectively because of these funding cuts.”
Barnett said that she maintains concerns about how funding cuts could limit opportunities for future graduate students.
“Less Ph.D students being hired and having their Ph.D programs funded? Certainly. There’s a lot of concerns about funding Ph.D students and training programs and different opportunities across different institutes around how to fund them, so that is something that we have continued concerns about,” Barnett said.
However, Barnett said that she remains hopeful for science, education and the resilience of researchers.
“I think that the fact that these grants got reinstated is just a testimony that there still are reasons to continue to do the work and to be dedicated to health equity and recognize that things can change,” Barnett said. “It’s still important to recognize what your values are related to scientific rigor, [DEI], and continue to work towards those things. Even if you’re being hated on, scrutinized for what you’re researching, just know that it’s good that your research is doing good and you’re helping society.”
A version of this article appeared on p. 10 and p. 11 of the Nov. 6 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
