A handwritten sign rests on a table at a rally supporting higher education researchers in Portland on Feb. 19, 2025. Researchers at Oregon universities say efforts to defund their work will have negative impacts on local communities.
Tiffany Camhi / OPB
Since 2022, Lisa Ellsworth has been studying how different communities across the West Coast recover from wildfires. The work is vital to understanding what resources people need to bounce back after a devastating wildfire event, said Ellsworth, who works as a professor at Oregon State University in the College of Agricultural Sciences.
“Not everyone recovers in the same way after a wildfire,” Ellsworth said. “We want to make sure that everybody in these fire-impacted communities has access to mechanisms of recovery.”
But the future of this federally-funded research is now uncertain. On Feb. 19, Ellsworth received an email from a grant manager at the U.S. Department of the Interior. The letter said her project violated recent executive orders signed by President Donald Trump. Ellsworth was given a choice by the grant manager at Interior.
“The manager indicated that I had 24 hours to let them know whether I would get the project into compliance with the executive orders or if I preferred to stop the grant,” Ellsworth said.
After consulting with the university, Ellsworth replied back, saying she would work with the federal agency to get the research into compliance. But so far, she hasn’t received any guidance on how to do that.
“I don’t actually know how to get the grant unfrozen at this point,” Ellsworth said.
Amid the flurry of executive actions from the Trump administration and lawsuits challenging them, researchers across Oregon’s universities are reeling. Some research faculty, like Ellsworth, have received stop-work orders for their federally-funded projects with little direction on what to do next. Other university researchers haven’t gotten any communication and are in a constant state of anxiety, waiting to see if or when their life’s work may be disrupted.
Some Oregon State researchers affected by the stop-work orders say they are particularly concerned that pauses in research funding will have a direct effect on people’s health and safety, such as by hampering the state’s response to wildfires.
“— Emily Jane Davis, OSU College of Forestry professor and leader of Northwest Fire Science ConsortiumThe reality is, whatever is happening politically, land managers are still going to be dealing with wildfires.
If we’re not able to serve them, they’re not going to be as connected to science, technical assistance and new knowledge about a whole variety of wildfire science topics.””
Emily Jane Davis is a professor with OSU’s College of Forestry and leader of the Northwest Fire Science Consortium, a program that provides federal land managers with the latest fire science through direct connections with wildfire researchers. Davis said the consortium received a stop-work order on Feb. 19.
“[The order] says our work may be out of compliance with the executive orders on merit and diversity, equity, inclusion and access. We were told that we would need to amend our scope of work to be in compliance,” Davis said. “I have not heard back from them yet on what that amending will look like.”
The project, which is more than a decade old, is entirely funded through a federal grant.
Davis said the work of preparing for wildfire events and restoring fire-adapted forest ecosystems needs to continue, because wildfires are still going to happen.
“The reality is, whatever is happening politically, land managers are still going to be dealing with wildfires,” Davis said. “If we’re not able to serve them, they’re not going to be as connected to science, technical assistance and new knowledge about a whole variety of wildfire science topics.”
For now, Davis is continuing parts of the consortium’s work. But she is unsure if the federal granting agency will reimburse OSU for the project’s current and future costs.
Researchers brace for funding cuts
According to public records provided to OPB by OSU and Portland State University, the grant-funded work that’s been directed to stop varies widely from wildfire research to cybersecurity training to behavioral healthcare studies. The orders originate from a dozen different federal agencies.
Among others, PSU has received orders to pause studies funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation and Department of Energy. OSU received similar directions from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Interior Department.
Oregon State University was awarded $370 million in federal research grants in fiscal year 2024. In an undated photo, an OSU graduate student processes grape samples.
Courtesy of Sean Nealon/OSU
Agencies notably missing from both universities’ rosters of stop-work orders are the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Both agencies have made recent headlines over their efforts to comply with Trump administration directives by making big changes to their grant programs.
Grants awarded by NSF and NIH account for the majority of research funding in the U.S. In 2021, the NSF’s $8.5 billion budget helped fund nearly a quarter of all federally-funded science and engineering research at higher education institutions across the country. The NIH awards most of its nearly $48 billion budget to research grants at universities, medical schools and other research institutions.
Losing out on funding from NSF and NIH would have devastating financial impacts on Oregon’s research universities, including Oregon Health and Science University.
“We haven’t seen a lot of manifestations yet of what’s to come,” Lillian Raley, a data manager at OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute, said. “There’s just been a lot of anxiety about trying to extrapolate out where your funding source comes from and if it’s cut, can we find other ways of supporting it? There’s not a lot of answers right now, just a lot of anxiety.”
Beyond job stability worries, Raley said the funding uncertainty has made it difficult for research teams at OHSU to plan out simple tasks, like daily workloads.
Raley is also concerned about the NIH’s move to cap indirect research costs to 15%.
Indirect costs include overhead expenses necessary to keep projects operating, like the cost to rent facilities, utility bills and salaries for administrative staff. Not having enough money to pay for these basic costs could prevent teams like hers from pursuing direct project tasks, such as opening new clinical trials.
“It has very serious real impacts for the community and for our loved ones who are going to have less access to new cancer treatments or new drug trials,” Raley said. “The changes that have been proposed to come through are a real threat, not only to researchers conceptually, but to every community member that lives in our area.”
Less empty words, more action
Some researchers at Oregon universities say they want to see university leaders do more to support faculty and stand up against the Trump administration orders.
Portland State University senior research assistant Ellis Hews (left) speaks at a rally supporting higher education researchers in Portland on Feb. 19, 2025.
Tiffany Camhi / OPB
On Feb. 19, more than 100 research faculty from universities across Oregon and Washington rallied against the NIH indirect costs guidance outside OHSU’s South Waterfront clinics. Higher education labor leaders spoke about the need to support research, science and education and urged higher education institutions to not preemptively cut programs and staff.
Ellis Hews, a senior research assistant at Portland State’s Institute on Aging, said PSU’s actions so far amount to little more than lip service.
“We are getting a lot of verbal support from our president, acknowledgement that the times are tough, given Trump’s executive orders,” Hews said.
Hews connected the conflict with the Trump administration to another local dispute: PSU’s unsettled faculty contract. PSU’s faculty union, the American Association of University Professors, is currently negotiating a new contract with the university. The union declared an impasse last week.
“One of the things that would really secure our full-time employment is settling a fair contract with PSU-AAUP because within that contract researchers would get bridge funding.”
Bridge funding supplements researchers' wages when grant funds are delayed or dried up, Hews said.
Universities in Oregon have largely taken a stance that some faculty and students may see as neutral. Higher education leaders have said their institutions will remain focused on their respective missions while monitoring federal changes.
Guidance at the University of Oregon is to continue research as normal while supporting the university community.
Andrew Ducharme, a physics graduate research student at UO, describes this as a “wait and see” approach. He would like the university to make a stronger statement against the executive orders.
“I understand where [the university] is coming from, but if we wait too long to say anything then it won’t matter when they do,” Ducharme said. “It’s a scary time and it feels like students would like UO to say something, say anything to slow this descent.”
Correction: The last name of Ellis Hews, a senior research assistant at Portland State’s Institute on Aging, has been updated to the correct spelling.
