‘A big gut punch’: Oregon universities lose millions in federal science funding

Physics professor Andrew Rice had already selected the 10 undergraduate students who would conduct geoscience research at Portland State University this summer.

Past interns had tracked atmospheric rivers to help the National Weather Service better forecast storms and tested do-it-yourself air filters, finding the most effective designs to recommend to Oregonians during wildfires. The 10-week summer program was the first time many of these emerging scientists would have the opportunity to research.

Then, one Friday in April, Rice received a short email from the program’s funder, the National Science Foundation. Their recently renewed federal grant had been terminated, with no explanation beyond a statement that it “no longer effectuate(d) the program goals or agency priorities.”

“I was most disappointed for my students,” Rice said. “When I received the news, my initial instinct was, ‘I need to tell my students today.’ ”

Rice’s Research Experience for Undergraduates was one of six National Science Foundation grants canceled at Portland State University. Across all Oregon universities, the foundation terminated at least 12 in the last two months, according to university spokespeople. These grants – totaling more than $6 million in funds awarded but not yet spent – supported scientific research and educational opportunities.

The National Science Foundation grant terminations were among a litany of research funding cuts at Oregon universities from various federal agencies. In May, Oregon State University lost $2 million from the Environmental Protection Agency; the money would have been used to test the effectiveness of wastewater treatment.

Affected scientists said they were provided no explanation for the cancellation beyond the email, even when they requested clarification.

However, following the first set of grant terminations, President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, shorthanded as DOGE, called them “wasteful DEI grants” on X. Portland State’s engineering professor Bob Bass said the words diversity, equity and anti-racism appeared frequently in the titles and descriptions of canceled research programs.

At PSU, Rice said, “One part of our program is broadening participation in the sciences and, in particular, the geosciences, which still has large disparities in gender and minority participation. If I had to speculate on the termination, that’d be why.”

Programs aiming to promote education in the fields of science, math, engineering and technology, like Rice’s, were among the grants most heavily hit, both in Oregon and nationwide. Of more than 1,600 grants canceled nationally, approximately half of them focused on educating the next generation of scientists. Those likely took the largest cuts because the programs often expanded access to science learning, targeting underrepresented students, Bass said, in fields that remain overwhelmingly white, Asian and male.

Tong Zhang, Portland State’s assistant dean for inclusive innovation, administered another of these terminated grants: the university’s branch of the regionwide Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation.

For the past 15 years, the program, which operates at universities across the Pacific Northwest, has worked to increase graduation rates for Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and Pacific Islander students in science and engineering. It helps students find research opportunities, apply to internships and graduate schools, navigate their classes and find community on campus.

She said these programs aim not only to increase undergraduate participation in science but also to ensure there are enough people to fill the science and engineering workforce.

“The immediate impact of the cuts is that there are undergraduates who have lost their paychecks for research. We have first generation college students who are not going to be able to pay the bills,” Zhang said. “The long-term impact is that we are not going to reach our national development goals.”

Portland State’s Diverse Internships in Semiconductor Careers was another program designed to strengthen the science workforce that got lopped off of the DOGE chopping block. The program had been approved to fund 56 local, paid internships in the semiconductor field across three years.

Now, as the first cohort of 10 wrap up their internships, the program has lost nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation. Chemistry professor Andrea Goforth, the project’s principal investigator, said she and other program leaders were able to pull from other funding sources to pay interns their final stipend but were left scrambling as the program’s money was abruptly canceled.

While program leaders are looking for other funding, to lose their federal grant was a hit to students and the local semiconductor industry, they said.

Not all science and engineering undergraduates can find paid internships, and 150 of them had applied for the next internship cycle before the grant got rescinded, said Christof Teuscher, an engineering professor.

“An internship and research experience in the middle of your college experience can be really career-determining and open doors to experiences students didn’t think were possible,” Goforth said.

Teuscher said several current interns plan to go into the industry professionally, having had little interest before the internship – a positive for the local semiconductor industry, which continues to need more workers.

Like her peers, Goforth received the vague notice of their grant termination on a Friday afternoon. While “diverse” was in the program’s title, Goforth said the program aimed to broaden participation across all demographics.

“We thought that ‘diverse’ made it clear that we were unambiguously including all, all students of any backgrounds and all industry partners big and small,” Goforth said.

Teuscher speculated that the program was cut simply because of that word.

Some federal grants funding research conducted by faculty members also had grant awards rescinded. Alida Cantor, a geography professor at Portland State, had federal funding for two research projects cut, including a National Science Foundation grant to examine the impact of energy processing, including lithium mining, on community water sources.

Cantor said she and her research team had already collected most of their data and conducted community interviews but hadn’t processed their findings or shared them.

After receiving notice of the cancellation late on an April Friday, Cantor was left scrambling. Instead of focusing on processing and publishing her research, she was given 30 days to finish all the paperwork for her terminated grant.

“It was a big gut punch,” Cantor said. “I’ve put so much time and energy into doing this work and to have it abruptly canceled is really demoralizing and devastating.”

Cantor said it’s been even harder for graduate students who depend on these grants for their careers. While Cantor is a tenured faculty member and plans to wrap up her research, now unpaid, alongside doing the rest of her job, students who were tied to the canceled grants don’t have the same flexibility.

“For students, they might have to drop out,” Cantor said. “They need funding right now. To say ‘In a few years, you might get a grant again’ doesn’t help them.”

The funding cancellations – impacting research, internships and support systems – risk undermining important foundational experiences for current science, technology and engineering students in Oregon universities, the researchers said.

“It’s super shortsighted. We’re investing in the future of science and technology in this country and this is how we do it. We invest in universities,” Rice said. “Those innovations will not come later, if we’re not investing in science today.”