After President Donald Trump drastically slashed the National Institute of Health’s funding, universities and research labs nationwide have been forced to cut positions and programs.

And these cuts are felt across Durham. Entire programs and positions at Duke University and other research institutions have been cut in the last few months, leaving researchers struggling to continue their work. Even researchers with active grants are bracing for the worst, as the future of NIH funding remains questionable.

Duke University received approximately $422 million NIH funding and grants last year. This year, the university has about $133 million in active funding and grants from NIH, about a third of last year’s funding, based on data provided by reporter.NIH.gov.

These changes in federal funding prompted a hiring freeze at Duke’s Department of Pharmacy, causing the Duke-Margolis Institute of Health Policy to cancel its entire summer research internship.

This action left student researchers – such as UNC biostatistics student Ivy Nangalia – scrambling to find work for the summer.

“It’s worrying, because I always trusted the sanctity of scientific institutions,” said Nangalia, a sophomore who was looking forward to this first federally funded research experience. “I never really saw a world where they would be in jeopardy.”

Nangalia is not relinquishing their desire to work in health policy research over the summer. They said they’re fortunate enough that a principal investigator at Duke is still willing to work with them on similar projects undertaken in the internship program. However, this opportunity comes without the pay they would have received as an intern.

“I’m lucky enough to be in a financial position where money or access to a paid internship isn’t something that I’m relying on,” Nangalia said. “I can still pursue unpaid options. But it’s unfortunate that a lot of people who were receiving these grants are paying their rent because of them, and there are a lot of people who aren’t in such a position where they can pursue more unpaid options.”

These funding slashes have not only impacted summer internship opportunities but drastically altered the career plans of graduating student researchers. Carolina Scientific Editor-in-Chief Sarah Giang is a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill who applied to nine health-related Ph.D. programs.

She interviewed at six of the schools and received offers from three. All three schools later rescinded their offers, citing the funding cuts as their reasoning.

“I just want to know why,” Giang said. “NIH funding makes the most amount of money for the United States. For every dollar we spend, we get like $5 back.”

What Giang is referring to is a study by United for Medical Research in 2024, which revealed that every dollar NIH invested returned $2.56 in economic activity.

This isn’t the only way Giang has seen the impacts of NIH funding cuts this year. They work as a researcher in the Robinson Lab in the School of Medicine, specifically in the Center for Alcohol Studies. The center receives an NIH grant to recruit “predoctoral and postdoctoral research training in specified shortage areas,” according to the NIH website.

“All of the post-doctorates in the entire center are paid off of the T32, and that funding was cut significantly,” Giang said. “It’s kind of been a shuffling around of, ‘you can leave this lab, but go into this other lab because they have funding,’ and just trying to take care of everyone that’s already here.”

This year has hardly been easier for the groups that have retained NIH funding.

Theater Delta is an educational consultant based in Durham that advocates for social change using theater and artistic expression. In 2023, the group earned roughly $552 million in an NIH grant to develop audience-participatory theater that would destigmatize the use of PrEP, or preventative HIV medication, among young women in Kenya.

The grant is spread over three years, with Theater Delta receiving a third of the grant amount annually. Since the new administration’s funding cuts, the organization has been receiving grant money monthly.

Executive Director Lyn Dickinson said she’s nervous that the money simply will stop coming in one month.

“We are kind of fortunate because the grant hasn’t exactly been outright denied,” Dickinson said. “But they’re only releasing funding on a month-to-month basis. And so there’s still uncertainty as to whether or not we’re going to be able to actually complete all of this year’s work.”

Dickinson is slated to visit Kenya later this month with her team to check on the project. However, given the recent changes to NIH funding and Theater Delta’s grant, there’s hesitation surrounding the trip.

“At this time, we’re a little bit uncertain if we’re going for the purpose of closure, or if we’re going for planning out the last year’s events and training,” Dickinson said.

Durham-based research funding expert Dr. Julia Barzyk helps university researchers secure funding through her company, Wise Investigator LLC. She emphasized that federal grants from organizations like the NIH are not “extra funds” for research, but are “absolutely required” to facilitate STEM research at universities and beyond.

“And the really important function of the grants is also that they’re providing the support for training students, postdocs and the next generation,” Dr. Barzyk said. “These folks need a hands-on training in the lab. They won’t be able to grow scientists themselves purely with education in the classroom.”

Giang echoed Dr. Barzyk’s statement, emphasizing that NIH funding is necessary for young scientists and researchers.

“While I don’t think that the administration was specifically targeting potential graduate students, the trickle-down effects were not thought about at all,” Giang said.

Dr. Barzyk recommended that researchers struggling with a loss of funding seek mentors in their field and alternate funding sources like foundations.

However, she noted that private funding through foundations is not a replacement for federal funding, as private funders represent a magnitude of funding lower than what the federal government has been supporting.