‘At Columbia we are affected by complete uncertainty from one day to the next,’ laments Joachim Frank, a pioneer of cryo-electron microscopy who won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 2017. Frank is referring to the situation at Columbia University that saw the Trump administration cut $400 million in federal grants and contracts in March over the institute’s supposed poor handling of on-campus protests against the war in Gaza – the grants were later restored after the university acceded to some of the administration’s demands. The Trump administration is now targeting the funding of the next generation of scientists, Frank says, adding that if he were younger he would leave to pursue a research career in Europe. He’s not alone in this assessment, with one of last year’s chemistry Nobel laureates noting that about 15 graduate students and postdocs at his institute are already looking for work outside of the US.
When Frank joined the university in 2008, he principally brought grants with him from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), a non-profit biomedical research organisation. At the time, his research group had 18 members, including technicians. But according to Frank, HHMI terminated his funding at the beginning of September 2017 – one month before he received the call from Stockholm.
Following the loss of HHMI funding, Frank decided to substantially reduce the size of his group and keep going with a consolidated National Institutes for Health (NIH) grant for basic research. That award is now in its fifth year of a competitive renewal cycle, and if his grant is one of the many earmarked for termination by the Trump administration then he warns that his work developing cryo-EM to visualise complex biological processes over fractions of a second will ‘falter’ and he plans to retire.
In January, Frank was eligible to renew the consolidated grant for another five years, but he says ‘the impending science-hostile atmosphere’ and his age – he’s 84 years old – meant he didn’t reapply. Frank has, however, just received what he describes as a ‘modest’ grant from the National Science Foundation that runs for three years.
He notes that the Trump administration’s first wave of NIH funding cuts at Columbia targeted early-career starting grants. The White House’s apparent intent was ‘to disrupt the continuation of science in this country as we know it’, Franks tells Chemistry World.
Columbia is cutting administrative staff at its research labs, he states, because the NIH announced in February that it will cap reimbursement of indirect costs that keep a lab running, such as heating and lights, at 15%, rather than the average 30%. This would mean that research universities like Columbia would have to make up the difference. However, in early April, the NIH directive was permanently blocked by a federal judge. The NIH appealed that permanent injunction days later, and that case remains pending.
The current hiring freeze at Columbia is also exacerbating the situation. In his department, Frank notes, the entire speakers’ seminar programme has been cut. ‘Personally, I would contemplate retiring immediately and leaving the USA for a European country, were it not for the fact that I’m advanced in age, and that we have an extended family here and particularly four grandchildren we want to be with,’ Frank says.
Uncertain climate for science
Meanwhile, the University of Washington biochemist and computational biologist David Baker, who shared the Nobel prize in chemistry last year for his work on protein design, says that approximately 15 of the graduate students and postdoctoral researchers at the UW Institute for Protein Design that he directs are looking for work at research institutions in other countries. He tells Chemistry World that several of them have already accepted jobs abroad. ‘I can confirm this and expect it is happening across the country,’ Baker says. ‘With jobs disappearing and funding totally uncertain in the US, it is natural that researchers will seek opportunities in countries that are supporting science strongly.’
Of those graduate students and postdocs at his institute who are seeking to relocate, he estimates that roughly two-thirds are foreign nationals and one-third are US citizens seeking better opportunities elsewhere.
Earlier this month, the University of Washington said that five of its students and four postgraduates had their visas cancelled without notice. Baker says there haven’t yet been any visa cancellations on his team, but he notes that some ‘close collaborators’ in labs at other research institutions have had their visas revoked. ‘Addressing the exodus will require action at the federal level,’ he cautions.
Since March, the Trump administration has rescinded the visas of more than 1000 foreign students and scholars at more than 150 colleges and universities across the country. Green cards that confer permanent US citizenship have also been cancelled, according to a recent Associated Press review. The US government has revoked these visas and green cards without substantive explanation. Earlier this month, for example, a chemical engineering student had his visa cancelled without warning.
In response, the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, an association of US college and university leaders, submitted an amicus brief to a district court on 9 April challenging these actions.
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