Neuroscientists who applied for grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) have faced weeks of confusion—and last week was no exception.
On 4 February, several open grant opportunities aimed at boosting diversity appeared to close prematurely and without explanation, following President Donald Trump’s executive order that called for the termination of such programs. Online pages for the NIH Blueprint and BRAIN Initiative Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience (D-SPAN) Award and the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research, for example, stated that they were no longer accepting applications. But yesterday the pages for both awards again listed their original closing dates of 6 October 2026 and 7 September 2025, respectively.
Also last week, six neuroscientists who had applied for D-SPAN or diversity NRSA grants told The Transmitter they had received notice from eRA Commons, the online portal used for NIH grant applications, that their applications were no longer assigned for review. That, too, has been reversed, at least for the NRSA applicants whose review dates have not already passed: On Monday, the review assignments reappeared in eRA Commons, according to the applicants and a report by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Diversity NRSA applications submitted in December are set to be reviewed in March for award in July at the earliest. The next application period is in April.
At the same time, some students who applied for D-SPAN awards late last year and had scheduled reviews canceled last month—including Rob Woodry, a graduate student in Jonathan Winawer’s lab at New York University, and Christina Ramelow, a graduate student in Srikant Rangaraju’s lab at Emory University—told The Transmitter that they are still waiting on a response from their program officers about their applications’ status. The award funds one to two years of predoctoral research and up to four years of postdoctoral work. The next round of applications is due in March.
With the multiple flip-flops in plans, “it’s hard to know what’s real,” says Josh Dubnau, professor in anesthesiology and in neurobiology and behavior at Stony Brook University, who has an NIH grant up for renewal this year.
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t now appears as if some of those previously pulled diversity grant applications, including diversity NRSAs, will be reviewed, says Jeffrey Weiner, professor of translational neuroscience at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, who is scheduled to review grants for an NIH study section later this month and adds that he is not speaking as a representative of his university.Still, Weiner says, there is no guarantee that those applications will be funded, even if they score highly on their reviews. “There’s a council that has to meet to approve all of this, and grants can’t be funded, really, without council approval,” he says. The February council meetings for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, for example, were canceled or postponed, respectively, in the wake of the Trump administration’s freeze on all NIH meetings. It remains unclear if the scheduled NRSA study sections will also be canceled, like those for D-SPAN were. The NIH press office did not respond to email or phone requests from The Transmitter for comment.
NIH officers have been instructed to not proactively contact applicants, according to a memo that an NIH official sent last week to NIH staff, and that an anonymous NIH staff member shared with The Transmitter. If applicants contact officers to inquire about the status of their application, officers should tell them to await automated notification from eRA Commons, the memo says.
In the meantime, Ramelow, who is also funded through a diversity NRSA grant, says she is unsure how she will fund some planned experiments for her graduate work if that award is not renewed in June. “I worked so hard to collect my samples,” she says. “What’s going to happen to all that work if I can’t complete it?”
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he confusion extends even to those neuroscientists who have already been awarded grants. Top of mind for many researchers is the new 15 percent cap on indirect research costs, such as electricity, heating and building maintenance, for all new and existing NIH grants—a move that the NIH announced late on Friday. The change is temporarily on hold, though, after a U.S. federal judge blocked the new policy from taking effect on Monday and scheduled a 21 February hearing about the matter.“It hasn’t impacted our ability to do the science yet,” Dubnau says. “But I have a grant renewal that’s submitted. I don’t know how this will impact that.”
And some previously promised funds have yet to arrive, says Anita Devineni, assistant professor of biology at Emory University, who applied for a diversity supplement grant to help fund a post-baccalaureate technician in her lab. An NIH program officer notified Devineni on 17 January that the award had been approved, and on 21 January, an NIH representative said that the award should be dispensed in the next few days, according to emails Devineni shared with The Transmitter. When that did not happen, Devineni says her institution’s grant coordinator followed up, and the NIH representative informed Devineni’s team on 28 January that the program had been paused.
Devineni says she has startup funds that she can fall back on to keep the technician employed, but that will affect other plans for growing her lab, which she opened in 2022. “Now [funding] is a little tighter,” she says. “I might end up saying no to graduate students this year if things are not looking good.”
