UCLA tells researchers to 'immediately stop spending' after Trump administration freezes grant funds

UCLA on Friday told researchers whose funding has been suspended by the Trump administration to “immediately stop spending” grant funds, leaving them scrambling to figure out how they’re going to pay for experiments that are underway.

An email sent by Roger Wakimoto, vice chancellor for research and creative activities, identified hundreds of grants that are now in limbo.

According to the notice, UCLA learned this week that 300 grants from the National Science Foundation and 500 grants from the National Institutes of Health had been suspended, along with two awards from the Department of Energy.

“The suspension of this funding — and the interruption of our research projects — is a loss for our country and a loss for the world,” Wakimoto wrote in the email, obtained by LAist, to campus administrators and people leading research.

How we got here

The Trump administration suspended at least $212 million in funding because, it said, UCLA did not do enough to address antisemitism on campus during protests and encampments against the Israeli war in Gaza, CalMatters reported.

This week, the university agreed to pay $6.45 million to settle a lawsuit resulting from those protests brought by students and a faculty member. The same day the settlement was announced, the U.S. Justice Department announced litigation against UCLA over allegations of antisemitism.

UCLA did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment. But two UCLA principal investigators involved in science research — who LAist is not naming because they were not authorized by the university to speak publicly — said the funding freeze could be devastating.

Grants are often used to fund research projects, covering the salaries of graduate student researchers, in addition to materials and other costs.

Supplies that keep experiments going or lab animals alive may be impossible to acquire with the grants frozen, one researcher said.

“Years worth of work can be lost if we can’t buy the little things to keep them going,” the person said.

What's next

It’s unclear if UCLA will step in to fulfill those orders, particularly for experiments that need to be continuously maintained.

“Everything I do is funded by NSF,” the researcher said, referring to the National Science Foundation. “Without that money, science would not be happening at all.”

The researcher said it's currently unclear whether graduate students will be paid while the grants are frozen.

The researcher said graduate students may continue to work anyway — because they want to complete their studies.

“They don't want all the work they've put in to be destroyed,” the person said.

While the federal funding is not terminated, according to Friday’s email from the UCLA's research vice chancellor, it is effectively frozen.

“Let me assure you that our goal is to restore funding to UCLA,” Wakimoto wrote.

How UCLA researchers are reacting

Researchers who spoke to LAist on Friday worried about the effects the funding freeze would have on their work, including in life sciences that rely on growing stem cells.

Samantha Butler, a professor in the department of neurobiology, is working on understanding how neurons develop in embryos to help people regain sensation after spinal cord damage.

“The immediate suspension of funding is simply a catastrophe for anyone like myself who works with living systems,” Butler said. “We can’t put our research on hold.”

While Butler may be able to bridge the gap in funding with philanthropic funds, Ben Novitch, who is also an investigator at the Broad Stem Cell Research Center, is more reliant on NIH money. Two of his grants — which fund research on human brain development and conditions including autism and Rett syndrome — have been suspended. And he’s unsure what will happen next.

Both Butler’s and Novitch’s labs use cocktails of expensive liquid to feed stem cells.

“These are cellular clusters that take months, hundreds of days, to get them to develop,” Butler said. If the cells aren’t fed, they die.

Irene Chen, a professor in the chemical and biomolecular engineering department, said she would have to halt projects that are fighting “superbug” infections and sepsis. If graduate and postdoctoral students aren’t paid, they could leave UCLA — “a loss of expertise that will take years to recover from,” she said via email.

“In the meantime,” Chen continued, “antibiotic resistant infections, not to mention scientists in other countries, will get further ahead of us.”