Continued instability with Tufts’ inflow of federal funds has resulted in cuts to professors’ research, students losing lab assistant positions and administrative difficulties in choosing where to distribute limited finances.
The sudden cuts are part of a continued effort by President Donald Trump and his administration to slash federal grants for research in higher education. Universities across the United States are being affected by these cuts.
Communication from Tufts about cuts was varied, leaving many in the dark about the status of their projects. One impacted researcher is Professor of Chemistry Joshua Kritzer, whose five-year research grant — largely funded through the National Institute of Health — stopped coming.
“I got very little communication and I got no insight into what was causing the delay,” Kritzer said.
Four months later, Kritzer received an email saying that his funding was approved and would be released into his account, though he wouldn’t receive it until a few weeks later.
“I still had to basically go to bare bones,” Kritzer said.
While Kritzer was able to continue his work due to Tufts’ support, albeit without any expansion and with only essential purchases, he lost researchers as he was unable to replace those who graduated and had to postpone the hiring of a post-doctoral student.
“The Ph.D. students and the post-docs who are working on these projects — it’s going to take them longer to earn their degree. So that’s a year of their greatest productivity, and the years that they’re going to be most creative and productive, and just putting a break on that,” Kritzer stated.
Cuts to funding also impacted Pooja Shah, a senior community health major who accepted positions to work with three Tufts professors during summer 2025. She learned that they lost funding from either the United States Agency for International Development or the NIH and were unable to hire her.
“Even before I started any work, I got this email that was like, ‘We’ve been issued a stop order,’ so I legally wasn’t allowed to do any more work for them,” Shah stated about one of her positions.
Shah believed much of the research was cut due to Diversity, Equality and Inclusion-related screenings, which appeared in several projects she was joining on public health impacts abroad.
“At first [Dr. Ramnath Subbaraman] was telling me, ‘It’s looking good,’” Shah said. “But it became pretty clear that it would be politically impossible for that grant to go through and not have some kind of issue with the federal government.”
Shah claimed that she never received clear acknowledgement from Tufts about how students were impacted by research cuts.
“I think some form of communication would have been great,” Shah said. “Even just something that was like, ‘Sorry this is happening. We know that this is a loss of income for you. Here are some ways we can support you.’”
While Shah expressed desire for more explanation, Kritzer praised Tufts’ communication amid his delayed funding.
“Their communication was excellent,” Kritzer remarked.
He later elaborated that he was “really proud of the way they supported not just the research, but the researchers, the graduate students, especially the international students.”
While he did not address the lack of communication, Bernard Arulanandam, the vice provost for research, commented on Tufts’ uneven financial support of research, which allowed Kritzer’s work to continue and left Shah without a research position.
“While we could not provide direct financial support in every case and for every dollar lost, our focus was on ensuring continuity, collaboration, and the strategic repositioning of affected research,” he wrote in a statement to the Daily.
Arulanandam addressed how Tufts will continue to safeguard research opportunities for researchers amid funding instability.
“Despite shifting federal budgets and an increase in legal and regulatory requirements, there continue to be significant opportunities — though the bar for competitiveness is rising,” Arulanandam wrote. “The current federal administration is making significant investments in artificial intelligence across diverse fields, such as healthcare, energy, manufacturing, and security, all areas where Tufts is well positioned to contribute.”
Entering the end of her time as an undergraduate, in a period where research is increasingly competitive, Shah placed emphasis on the greater losses that stem from research cuts.
“People … tell me that they’re sorry for me,” Shah said. “And, as much as I appreciate that, I think the bigger focus is just that people are gonna die. People will literally lose their life because of this, because a lot of this was very immediate research that funds peoples’ needs, like water sanitation, [tuberculosis] medicine, all of those things are things that people will die without.”
Kritzer echoed Shah’s comments, believing that the Trump administration’s cuts to scientific research have dangerous consequences.
“As a person involved in the scientific enterprise, I’m angry,” Kritzer said. “It makes me angry, both because I don’t want science to be politicized, and also because they are trashing one of the greatest engines of human progress in human history, which is the American biomedical research system.”
