By SUSAN JONES
Universities like Penn and Columbia are seeing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants frozen or terminated, and Pitt has not been immune to these actions, but Rob Rutenbar, senior vice chancellor for research, said at the Senate Research committee recently that the numbers here aren’t gigantic.
The Post-Gazette reported and the University has confirmed that two Pitt projects have definitely lost funding from the National Institutes of Health:
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Erika Forbes, professor of psychiatry, pediatrics and psychology, and Jennifer Silk, professor of psychology, had been investigating suicide vulnerability among LGBTQ people ages 18 to 30. The pair received a grant of $759,447 in 2024 and $2.92 million since 2021.
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Kar-Hai Chu, associate professor in the School of Public Health, was researching vaccine consent laws affecting minors and potential interventions to improve vaccine use. He was awarded $633,148 last year for the work, $455,717 of which was to be issued in 2025.
They join Sharon Hillier, a professor of reproductive infectious disease and vice chair for faculty affairs in the School of Medicine, who was to receive $25.5 million from U.S. Agency for International Development to study products that protect against sexually transmitted HIV in young women, gay men, transgender women and other groups.
The University declined to say how many more grants have been impacted, but it’s likely more than just these three. Rutenbar said the scale and breadth of award cancellations happening now appears to be different than previous years.
“The new administration has communicated (for example, via executive orders) that it has new/different priorities for where research funds should be spent, and which topics are considered appropriate as targets for that federal funding,” Rutenbar said in response to University Times questions. “We are informed that these awards are judged to be topics that are no longer aligned with these new priorities.”
When these projects lose funding, Rutenbar said, “Pitt research administrators work with the faculty and the units where they are located to manage the administrative aspects to stopping the work, and ensuring there are appropriate follow-ups, for example when there are human subjects in a clinical trial, who need to be notified of the termination and appropriately transitioned.”
Hillier told the Post-Gazette that the loss of the grant cost 30 lab workers their jobs.
At the March 24 Research committee meeting, Rutenbar said that Pitt has not been hit like the University of Pennsylvania, which saw $175 million cut in grants, or Johns Hopkins University, which lost $800 million in funding with the almost complete closure of USAID.
“We’re not on any of the lists of schools that are being targeted for alleged infractions of behavior,” he said. “We are basically like everybody else, waiting to see how leadership, and in some cases new leadership in some of the federal agencies, is going to reshape their research portfolios. We know these conversations are happening. The thing that makes life challenging is we don’t know exactly what the guidance is going to be.
“The thing that makes things challenging is there isn’t exactly crisp guidance of what it means to be doing too much DEI, shall we say. So, we’re mostly in a kind of a wait and see mode.”
He said they don’t know what the government is going to do in terms of stopping projects completely or just partly or “just remove these words or sentences from your award and you can keep doing what you’re doing.”
Other research news
Rutenbar did have some positive news at the Research committee meeting.
The passage of the federal budget continuing resolution in March means that the 2024 budget will stay in place for the next six months, which keeps funding flat for the National Science Foundation, NIH, NASA and the Department of Energy — all of which fund Pitt projects.
“It also keeps intact the statutory language that for us is important — it keeps the landscape for how the NIH charges indirect costs the same. And one of the things that statutory language also says is that the executive (branch) can’t unilaterally change that. It requires an act of Congress, so that stays in place. That’s important.”
The Department of Defense did see some cuts, around 5%. He said there might be some impact from cuts to the DOD’s Research Development, Testing and Evaluation unit, which helps fund research labs for different branches of the military.
The continuing resolution also cut by 57% the Congressionally Designated Medical Research Programs, from $1.5 billion to $650 million.
Rutenbar said they’re trying to figure out what the impact to Pitt will be from these two cuts. Pitt is engaged in some research for the military, but he said, they don’t know if the cuts will apply just to new research or current projects.
He reminded everyone that Pitt Research is tracking the different executive orders and temporary restraining orders and posting them on a website. He has previously requested that if researchers receive any notices from the government, to please let them know.
Outreach to lawmakers
“I’ve been in D.C. a bunch recently,” Rutenbar said. “We went around the hill and talked with congresspersons and staffers for congresspeople.”
He said they got a chance to meet in March with Pennsylvania’s new senator, Dave McCormick, who has ties to higher education. McCormick’s father was president of Bloomsburg University and later chancellor for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. His mother also was a college professor.
“In every one of those meetings, the narrative is that research is an enormous public good. Pitt is enormously good at this. There’s a tremendous amount of social impact,” Rutenbar said.
At the Washington, D.C., meetings, they brought the interim director of the Hillman Cancer Center, which is one of the top five comprehensive cancer centers in the U.S., in terms of size, and reaches a 29 county area in Western Pennsylvania with its regional offices.
“We were able to have very concrete conversations about how if you are a kid suffering a pediatric cancer or a young adult with a rare cancer, really your only shot is being close to a comprehensive cancer center, a nationally designated cancer center, because these are rare enough events that conventional pharma is not really going to be working on stuff for you. … NIH funds clinical trials. It gets people into studies. It does the next generation research.”
He said they also talked with lawmakers about Pitt’s economic impact, including more than $1 billion in research alone. “We were able to use that to have conversations about how the pause on NIH funding is problematic,” he said, particularly for projects that are just waiting for the final approval to get funding moving.
Indirect costs
One person at the Research meeting said that at the School of Medicine, they’ve been told to prepare for a 25% rate for indirect costs. The Trump administration initially wanted to cut the rate to 15%, but that order is currently tied up in the courts. Pitt’s current rate is 59%.
Jeff Bees, vice chancellor for finance and resources for Pitt’s schools of Health Sciences, said the basis for the 25% is their best estimate at this point.
“We also think that the days of individually negotiated rates at the levels that they’ve historically been, we probably won’t return to that,” Bees said. “And so the 25% rate is what we’re using for now, while we don’t have better information — not wanting to plan on the 15%, because we think that’s not realistic that it will land there, but also not wanting to be overly optimistic.”
He said his counterparts at other universities also are estimating that indirects could end up at 25% to 35%.
“My read of this is that this is something probably that happens legislatively, and very well could happen in connection with the federal ‘26 budget,” he said. “So we’re talking months yet before we know where this lands.”
In order to prepare for a new university budget starting July 1, “we need to pick a number in order to start from. We’re working with that number now, and then trying to take a measured approach at how we implement that. … We want to make sure that we’re taking an approach here where we are being true to our mission, that we are looking to preserve science. We are looking to make sure that that we are supporting our researchers and, frankly, to also protect pipeline of future researchers.”
Rutenbar noted that Pitt is “amazingly tightly run as a financial organization,” unlike some its peers that are facing huge budget deficits. “If you’re going to go into something that’s financially tough, that is where you want to start. You don’t want to start in a hole and then figure out how to get out of it while someone else is digging.”
Penn State, for instance, has been trying to reduce its budget deficit for several years and has said it plans to close some of its regional campuses next year.
The single rate for indirects may be direction that the government is heading, Rutenbar said, but they’re also having conversations about “a less complicated environment for how you calculate what you put the indirects on.” He said Pitt is all for transparency and audits, but if the rate is going to be lower, “is there a way to reduce the regulatory burden.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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