Grid of black-and-white headshots of neuroscience trainees.
Diversity grant guessing: It’s unclear if the D-SPAN Award program will be able to honor its commitments, several award recipients told The Transmitter.

‘A gut punch:’ How U.S. neuroscience trainees are grappling with diversity-based funding flux

Ten trainees spoke with The Transmitter about how the precarious state of U.S. federal funding is affecting their research and career plans.

Over the past few weeks, the status of science funding in the United States has become shrouded in uncertainty. Federal grants have been frozen and unfrozen, study sections at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been canceled and rescheduled, and funding opportunities have closed and reopened.

Programs focused on increasing the diversity of the scientific workforce are in a particularly vulnerable spot, following a 21 January executive order that terminated all diversity-specific grants. The change has left neuroscience trainees reeling. Applicants told The Transmitter they are unsure if their submissions will be reviewed, and awardees said they worry their promised funding won’t be fulfilled after all. In the long term, these researchers are concerned about the potential loss of diversity across the neuroscientific workforce.

One of the imperiled programs is the NIH Blueprint and BRAIN Initiative Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience (D-SPAN) Award, which funds two years of predoctoral work and up to four years of postdoctoral work. It functions as two grants that trainees would otherwise need to secure separately: an F99 grant that students typically apply for toward the end of their Ph.D. and a K00 grant for when they are ready to begin a postdoctoral position. But now it’s unclear if the program will be able to honor those commitments, several D-SPAN Award recipients told The Transmitter.

The Transmitter spoke with 10 neuroscience trainees funded by D-SPAN Awards and other NIH diversity grants about what the rapid series of changes over the past few weeks has meant for them, their research and their futures.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. 

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