As a university researcher focused on education, I have spent hundreds of hours designing studies to help the field and that might attract the National Science Foundation’s attention.
When I received my first National Science Foundation funding award – after many failed attempts – I joined a list of scholars whose work has led to innovations like the smartphone, high-speed fiber-optic networks and educational television shows like “Bill Nye the Science Guy.”
Congress created the National Science Foundation, or NSF, in 1950, to fund scientific and technological discoveries that benefit Americans.
In the academic world, few things signal success like receiving one of the approximately 11,000 grants the NSF gives out to researchers each year. These grants are typically worth an average of US$200,000, dispersed over several years. The foundation gives out about $8.5 billion annually in total.
The National Science Foundation’s work, though, has been upended under the current Trump administration – making it harder for researchers to secure funding that is necessary to complete our work.
Here’s what is most important to understand about what the National Science Foundation does, and why its work matters far beyond academic and scientific research circles:
Changes at NSF
Sethuraman Panchanathan, the National Science Foundation’s former director, resigned in April 2025, offering little explanation. The foundation remains without formal leadership.
Even with its fiscal year 2026 budget largely protected by Congress, the NSF has awarded grants at roughly 20% of its historical rate this fiscal year.
And in April, the Trump administration, without explanation, fired all 22 members of the National Science Board, an independent advisory group that supports the foundation’s work and also advised the president and Congress on science.
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Not just an academic problem
After eight years of teaching high school science, I decided to get a Ph.D. to help improve the way science is taught. As a single father, though, I couldn’t have done it without the financial stipend my adviser gave me – thanks to his NSF funding – and some additional teaching on the side.
Eventually, I graduated, got my first job and received my first National Science Foundation funding award, which I used to support several students I worked with, similar to what had been done for me.
I’ve spent the past decade as a university researcher studying how family interactions shape the personal connections children make with science and engineering. This includes studying how children develop false stereotypes about who can become a scientist.
The Biden administration awarded me the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for this work.
Today, however, my research would likely not get funded.
This is in part because the now dismantled Department of Government Efficiency directed the cancellation of more than 1,700 NSF grants worth approximately $1.4 billion in 2025.
Some observer groups suggest the numbers may be much larger, in part because the National Science Foundation stopped updating its list of cancellations in June 2025.
Many projects were flagged and terminated for using words like “women,” “bias,” “stereotype” and “race”.
Two of my NSF-funded research projects were terminated in 2025. One study examined how short social media videos can support healthy parenting in families facing extreme weather events. The second was a national study of how children from different cultures and races participate in out-of-school science learning activities.
A competitive process
The National Science Foundation accepts roughly 1 in 5 applications.
First, funding proposals have to meet or exceed the highest standards of scientific rigor. Second, a person or team’s proposed research must show great promise for benefiting society.
The NSF funds physics, engineering and other kinds of scientific research. It also funds research focused on sociology, linguistics, education and economics.
The National Science Foundation has funded projects that developed the mathematics behind how kidneys get matched to donors and research tracking how extreme weather reshapes communities.
Most of the funding the agency distributes goes to university-based researchers. Approximately 25% of all the federal funding that U.S. colleges and universities receive to conduct scientific studies comes from the National Science Foundation.
Funding discoveries that benefit all
When Congress passed the National Science Foundation Act in 1950, paving the way for the foundation itself, it also set up the National Science Board. The president appoints the board’s 24 members, who are typically highly regarded scientists and industry leaders. Members of the board serve six-year terms as part-time advisers – not government employees – to ensure independence.
While board members typically don’t decide what gets funded, they help set up rules and standards the National Science Foundation uses to select the most promising research funding applications.
Before 2025, the foundation also recruited outside experts – typically university researchers – to weigh in on the merits of nearly every funding proposal. Five to 12 of these experts, who received a small stipend, reviewed each application.
Experts then send certain applications to National Science Foundation employees. These employees then ultimately decide whether to approve an application.
This all changed in December 2025, when the foundation made this external review process optional. Some National Science Board members openly questioned these changes. Four months later, all of the board members were fired.
Some critics argue that the terminations themselves were unlawful because National Science Board members are appointed to fixed terms under federal law, and the statute does not clearly authorize the president to remove them before those terms expire.
While House Democrats have questioned the legality of firing the board members, there’s been no legal action to reinstate the board members.
A few members of the National Science Board have suggested that the terminations would give the current administration more control over what research gets funded and leave little room for independent scientific experts to weigh in.
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Playing by different rules
Additional changes might be in store for the National Science Foundation.
The White House Office of Management and Budget proposed a major overhaul of the rules for all federal grants on May 29, 2026.
The new rules would give individual political appointees power to hide competitive grant opportunities from the public so only those with direct knowledge could apply. Political appointees could also cancel grants at any point for almost any reason, even if an optional review panel of 12 outside experts believe the funding is in the best interest of the American people.
These rules would apply to all federal grants, whether research-related or not. For the National Science Foundation, the new rules don’t eliminate the National Science Board’s oversight on paper, but they would make that oversight practically meaningless, even if the members are reinstated.
The proposed rules, which do not require congressional approval, are expected to be finalized by Oct. 1, 2026. Some legal experts anticipate the change will face immediate court challenges.
A loss of trust
For decades, despite knowing that most NSF proposals fail, researchers have been willing to commit countless hours to applying for research grants because it represented a gold standard in science funding.
They trusted that multiple experts would impartially assess their projects, based on their merit. But the past year’s changes have thrown that process into disarray. This shift means that many people who might have benefited from NSF-funded innovations never will experience the effect of new discoveries that could improve their lives.
