Laboratories across the United States are facing a new reality in 2025.

In normally bustling universities, the silence is growing. Stalled funding decisions, missing grant notifications, and the quiet cancellation of entire research programs have left the research community navigating an increasingly unstable landscape.

These funding cuts are largely due to the newly founded Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is a federal initiative formed from the US Digital Service, rebranded, and launched in January 2025. DOGE’s main aims are modernizing government technology, improving operational efficiency, and reducing regulatory and administrative costs.

These federal realignments have had immediate consequences for academic labs and industrial partnerships. While some institutions are still assessing the long-term impact, the uncertainty is already taking its toll. The advisory body is intended to streamline expenditures and enhance return on investment in public sector funding; however, these shifts are producing ripple effects across laboratories, research programs, and university institutions.

“From the National Institutes of Health and Human Services (NIH) to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), DOGE’s efforts to impose rapid and widespread cuts to federal science funding threaten to erode a crucial source of national progress and power—the US research ecosystem,” said Max Yoeli, senior research fellow at Chatham House, an independent policy institute based in London.

These measures have had a notable impact on scientists working in analytical chemistry, particularly those in federally funded research institutions and regulatory agencies. Budget reductions have led to delays in grant disbursements and cuts to staffing in laboratories across the country. These cutbacks have come at a time when universities across the US are already experiencing enormous pressures. In a letter published in Science, the heads of 36 US-based chemistry departments have detailed their “deep concern” about the measures facing their subject (1).

This could have deep impacts for scientists working across critical research areas. In a recent LCGC International peer exchange, Carrie McDonough, assistant professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University, highlighted how this pressure is affecting collaborative research on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), for example.

“We have a lot of collaborations that are interesting, and we want to work more across different sectors, but it depends on the future of science support in the US,” she said.

Escalation of Funding Cuts

In early 2025, the Trump administration proposed substantial reductions across several key scientific agencies, which would impact the research of analytical scientists:

• NIH: A proposed 40% cut, reducing the budget from $47 billion to $27 billion. This includes the elimination of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the National Institute of Nursing Research.
• National Science Foundation (NSF): A proposed 55% cut, bringing the budget down from $9 billion to $4 billion. The NSF is a primary funder of fundamental research in the US, including analytical chemistry.
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): A proposed 31% reduction, including deep cuts to the Office of Research and Development, which supports studies on chemical safety and environmental health.

In addition, the administration announced a cap on indirect cost reimbursements from the NIH at 15%, down from previous rates that often exceeded 50%. This change impacts universities' abilities to cover essential operational costs associated with research.

These proposals affect not only current projects but also create obstacles for future research efforts. “DOGE’s cuts imperil current projects, and also jeopardize future breakthroughs, as lab closures and inadequate funding preclude cutting-edge research,” Yoeli said.

Scientia potentia est

Kevin A. Schug, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Arlington, described the profound effects of a delayed NSF decision.

Having submitted a grant at the end of 2024, he is still waiting for an update. The project in question was poised to support an interdisciplinary collaboration applying data science to optimize analytical measurements—work that, without NSF backing, has few alternative funding options.

“We’re pressing on without renewed funding, but we cannot sustain productivity forever without support,” he said.

This experience reflects a broader pattern of disruption. “Everyone I know who had an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant also had their grants cancelled,” said Susan Richardson, Arthur Sease Williams Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina.

Although Richardson’s lab has not yet faced cuts, she expressed concern about the fragility of current support mechanisms, especially for international scholars.

“My students are freaked out,” she said. “Even my domestic students are concerned about stipends and tuition funding vanishing if my grants get cancelled.” One of her senior PhD students is even planning to defend early just to escape the uncertainty and find a job, she said.

This growing atmosphere of instability aligns with Yoeli’s wider warning that “broader administration efforts to politicize science and punish research institutions” destabilize the structures that have made American research globally competitive.

“Currently, I am relying on some back-up funds I have accumulated through the years, but that will not sustain our efforts for very long,” Schug said. While some US institutions are trying to step in, the scale of support needed may outstrip what universities alone can provide.

“Our university has vowed to support grad students if grants get cancelled,” Richardson said, referencing temporary teaching assistant support for affected labs. “But if many more grants get cancelled, I’m concerned about whether they can really find the money—especially with lowered indirect rates and less funding coming in than was committed.” Elsewhere, temporary reallocation of instrumentation budgets to protect personnel has been mooted as a short-term reprieve.

Scientists expressed cautious optimism about adapting through alternative strategies such as strengthening ties with industry or reprioritizing short-term projects. But these approaches may not be able to replace foundational research support from agencies like the NSF or EPA.

“Basic research is hard to fund privately,” Schug said. “Our collaborations with private companies are productive, but they tend to focus on more applied projects.”

Richardson confirmed that she was considering applying to a foundation for support, “but I’m in a wait-and-see mode because my best ideas are already out there in my awarded grants,” she said.

Both Schug and Richardson pointed to growing concerns around international collaboration and student mobility. Delays in visa approvals are already surfacing, and some students are concerned that even minor infractions—like traffic violations—could have severe consequences.

“One of my international students decided not to buy a car after hearing that a peer was deported for a speeding ticket,” Richardson said. “It’s affecting their daily lives and mental health.”

Schug described a shift to shorter-term projects, but with industries like pharma slowing hirings, even timely graduations aren’t guaranteed immediate placement.

“We’ve prioritized shorter-term goals and research projects over longer-term ones,” he said. “We’re aiming current students to an endpoint in their degree-seeking sooner, rather than later, but I do not want to sacrifice rigor or quality significantly.”

Research in the UK also Faces a Funding Squeeze

The United States is just one of many countries worldwide scaling back funding for scientific research. The lack of funding and shrinking academic programs in core technical fields can be seen most clearly by the universities either closing or set to close their chemistry departments, including the University of Hull, Aston University, and the University of Reading. Though driven by different policy goals, the UK is facing cuts in research. The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) was awarded around £8.811 billion from the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) for 2025–26, which is down in real terms from the previous year due to inflation and rising costs.

A major funder of scientific research, the Wellcome Trust has criticized the UK government’s recent decision to push back the £22bn a year on R&D spending to 2030 calling it a “reduction in ambition at a time when the UK desperately needs the economic growth that investing in science brings” (3).

Research in the UK has experienced intermittent funding cuts and financial pressures for over a decade. With the UK seeing a steady decline in the analytical sciences relative to other parts of the globe, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Separation Science Group (SSG), and The Chromatographic Society (ChromSoc) set up a meeting in 2024 to address this, finding a similar pattern of underinvestment and skill attrition.

Focusing on academia in the UK, Andrew Pitt from the University of Manchester, UK, described how chromatography is not covered in sufficient depth during a degree program, citing that over a three-year course, students received a maximum of 12 hours—and on average, just 3 hours—of instruction on the subject (2). He went on to say that, given the widespread use of chromatography in industry, it would be taught across a broader range of disciplines, such as physics, engineering, and materials science.

Looking to the Future

Moving forward, Schug argued that more integrated partnerships with private and nonprofit sectors may help build resilience, but emphasized that this will require principal investigators to realign their work with broader stakeholder interests.

“Researchers will be forced to diversify their research to receive support from different sources,” he said. “More integrated partnerships with private companies and non-profit organizations could be a good avenue for universities to pursue, to help support their research enterprise.”

While Schug expressed optimism about the potential advances from their pending NSF grant, he also acknowledged the need to adapt, stating that if funding does not materialize, they will pivot to other research projects, highlighting the resilience of researchers facing uncertainty.

Slashing science funding “provides limited savings in the context of a massive federal budget, and the opportunity cost of advances forgone is vast,” Yoeli said. The deeper cost, he said, is not just financial—it is the loss of what might have been discovered, cured, or invented.

“Government-supported research has long underpinned progress across sectors and disciplines, driving a healthier, more prosperous, and secure nation,” Yoeli said. 

Join the Conversation

Research cuts and delays are more than budget items—they’re driving real shifts in how—and whether—critical research continues.

If you or your colleagues are seeing impacts or innovating to adapt, we want to hear from you. Please email kjones@mjhlifesciences.com for your say.

References

(1) Allen, K.; Armentrout, P. B.; Berkman, C.; et al. US Must Support Chemistry Research. Science 2025, 388, 1282–1283. DOI: 10.1126/science.adx8085

(2) Edge, T.; Ferguson, P. The State of UK Separation Science. The Column 2024, 20, 5–8.

(3) Wellcome Responds to Government Spending Review; Wellcome. https://wellcome.org/news/wellcome-responds-government-spending-review (accessed 2025-06-25).