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Ari Krakowski and John Steinberg prepare to open an exhibit at UC Berkeley\u2019s Lawrence Hall of Science museum designed in partnership with Indigenous youth on May 13. The project is one of 18 at UC Berkeley to see its National Science Foundation funding suspended. Credit: Kelly Sullivan for Berkeleyside<\/p>\n
When the National Science Foundation suspended nearly $21 million in research grants<\/a> to UC Berkeley last month, it charged the projects\u2019 principal investigators with failing to disclose funding they received from outside the United States.<\/p>\n The countries named by the NSF were largely traditional U.S. allies such as the United Kingdom, Australia and Switzerland, rather than nations the federal government has identified as security threats. And several of those lead researchers said they had not received any funding from the countries the NSF specified.\u00a0<\/p>\n The allegations of undisclosed foreign funding, detailed in an April 13 letter to the university obtained by Berkeleyside, could signal a new front in the conflict over research dollars between the UC system and the Trump administration. The White House has been waging a yearlong campaign to exert ideological control over college campuses, proposing new rules this week giving political appointees more sway<\/a> over federal grantmaking.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 18 grants ranged from a study on the skin color of poison frogs to the development of new ways to edit genes in corn and barley plants, and AI-fueled research on autonomous driving.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tREAD MORE<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tThe Indigenous exhibit that Trump failed to stop<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n A first-of-its-kind collaboration between Ohlone youth and UC Berkeley\u2019s Lawrence Hall of Science almost fell apart when a federal grant was axed. Then researchers took the Trump administration to court \u2014 and won.<\/p>\n Some were for projects with connections to climate change or inequality \u2014 areas targeted for cuts by the Trump administration last year when it embarked on a mass cancellation of research funding across multiple agencies. Two of the grants on the list \u2014 for an exhibit at the university\u2019s Lawrence Hall of Science museum<\/a> designed in partnership with Indigenous youth, and a training program for Ph.D. students on using data to analyze disparities in the criminal justice system<\/a> \u2014 had been previously canceled<\/a>, then reinstated last June after researchers sued in federal court.\u00a0<\/p>\n But others appear to involve less-controversial basic research in chemistry and biology. One project is headed by a Nobel Laureate.<\/p>\n University spokesperson Dan Mogulof declined to answer specific questions about the grant suspensions, but said the university \u201chas an unwavering commitment to transparency and compliance with federal laws and regulations.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Markita Landry, a UC Berkeley chemist, said she was about two-thirds of the way through a $600,000 grant to study gene editing in plants when she received the suspension notice. Her team wanted to see if they could use the CRISPR gene editing technology, first developed at UC Berkeley, to make plants more resilient to stressors like pests and shifting weather. The work was broadly applicable to agriculture but made more urgent by the rapid pace of human-induced climate change, Landry said.<\/p>\n \u201cTo avoid sudden losses of our food supply, we need to work to better translate technologies and apply them broadly to crops so we can keep up with changing climate pressures,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The NSF\u2019s contention that Landry had received undisclosed funding from the United Kingdom came as a surprise, she said. Landry \u2014 who holds triple US, Canadian and Bolivian citizenship \u2014 said she had no financial, academic or even personal relationship to the UK that she was aware of.<\/p>\n Landry\u2019s team had first fine-tuned their methods using agriculturally useless practice plants, then planned to move on to practical applications in barley, a staple crop. Now that step is unlikely to happen, she said.<\/p>\n International collaboration is common in the sciences, and the receipt of foreign funds does not disqualify a researcher from obtaining federal grants. But scientists must disclose in their applications other funding \u2014 foreign and domestic \u2014 that they are currently receiving or have applied for.<\/p>\n Ari Krakowski, the principal investigator for the Lawrence Hall of Science exhibit highlighting Indigenous knowledge, said the exhibit had not received any foreign funding.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were scouring our brains for, \u2018Could it be this? Could it be that?\u2019\u201d she said. Krakowski, who the NSF said had failed to report funding from Germany, said she had received a previous grant from a U.S.-based foundation that funds a wide range of charitable and academic work. It\u2019s possible that the foundation could have received funds from outside the U.S., Krakowski said \u2014 but she had stopped billing for her time on that project by the time she applied for the Lawrence Hall of Science grant.\u00a0<\/p>\n Suspensions follow foreign funding investigation by Education Department<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the first time the Trump administration has accused UC Berkeley of filing incomplete disclosures of foreign funding. Last year, the Department of Education launched an investigation into foreign gifts to the university<\/a>. The department cited media coverage from 2023, a likely reference to reports that the university had formed a multimillion-dollar partnership with China\u2019s Tsinghua University<\/a> to build a joint research institute. The university said in 2025 that the partnership was no longer active.<\/p>\n Of the 18 grant suspensions the NSF announced in April at UC Berkeley, just one mentioned funding from China, which intelligence officials have described as the U.S.\u2019s main strategic competitor in the world. Other countries mentioned included France, South Africa, Sweden, Germany, Singapore, Japan, the Netherlands, Brazil and South Korea.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were scouring our brains for, \u2018Could it be this? Could it be that?\u2019\u201d \u2014 Ari Krakowski, Lawrence Hall of Science<\/p>\n The agency\u2019s letter struck a punitive tone, in some cases referring to the university\u2019s actions as \u201cmisconduct.\u201d While the grants were suspended, not terminated, the letter said that UC Berkeley had failed to take corrective action in response to past concerns and \u201copportunities to cure are not appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe scientific integrity of NSF\u2019s research programs is grounded in our gold-standard merit review process, which UCB has put at risk by its failure to properly disclose all foreign funding,\u201d Jason Bossie, the agency\u2019s head of award management, wrote in a largely boilerplate explanation for each grant suspension.\u00a0<\/p>\n The NSF declined to answer any questions on the suspensions, including what evidence the agency had relied on to make its decision.<\/p>\n A new approach from the Trump administration? <\/p>\n While the suspensions cover grants worth $21 million, the financial loss to the university is likely less, because many grantees had already spent the bulk of their funding. UC Berkeley was awarded $92 million in NSF grants in fiscal year 2025<\/a>, according to a university website.<\/p>\n The losses amount to a fraction of the university\u2019s $4 billion budget. But the number of NSF grants affected is higher than last year, when the Trump administration embarked on a mass termination of research grants issued by multiple agencies nationwide that it said did not align with administration priorities, according to the nonprofit website Grant Witness, which has been tracking the cancellations.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hundreds of grants to UC researchers that were revoked in that purge were later restored under a ruling in a class action lawsuit<\/a>. UC scientists said even after many grants were reinstated, the volatility in federal support has led to a chilling effect, causing labs to modify their grant applications in order to evade taboo topics, and slow hiring for fear they would need to lay off staff if promised funds disappear.<\/p>\n Berkeley right now is the canary in the coal mine. The administration is strangling the flow of funds out of the agency, in particular on topics that it doesn\u2019t like. It also seems like it\u2019s trying its hand at new ways of suppressing and canceling research.\u201d \u2014 Noam Ross, cofounder of a website tracking grant cancellations nationwide<\/p>\n After a lull in grant terminations since then, the current NSF suspensions at UC Berkeley may mark the leading edge of a new crackdown, said Grant Witness cofounder Noam Ross, a computational scientist. He noted that it comes as President Donald Trump has fired the NSF\u2019s independent scientific advisory board<\/a> and proposed drastic cuts to the agency\u2019s budget<\/a>. His group had collected only one other report of a terminated NSF grant in 2026, he said, but had heard from other researchers whose annual funding disbursements had been delayed.<\/p>\n \u201cBerkeley right now is the canary in the coal mine,\u201d Ross said. \u201cThe administration is strangling the flow of funds out of the agency, in particular on topics that it doesn\u2019t like. It also seems like it\u2019s trying its hand at new ways of suppressing and canceling research.\u201d<\/p>\n A familiar anxiety returns for UC Berkeley researchers <\/p>\n This week, the science journal Nature reported that the NSF had put limits on funding to four elite universities<\/a>: Harvard, Princeton, Duke and Yale. And the White House\u2019s Office of Management and Budget proposed sweeping new rules<\/a> that would consolidate political control over new federal grantmaking, allowing administration appointees to overrule peer reviewers in ensuring that projects serve the president\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n At UC Berkeley, researchers are working with the university\u2019s legal counsel to provide further documentation about their funding in hopes the suspensions will be reversed, Landry said. She said scientists and administrators had also discussed heading off concerns by being more proactive about reporting funding to federal agencies as it is awarded, even when it\u2019s not required for a specific application.<\/p>\n After the wave of federal grant cancellations seemed to ebb last year, she said, she and other scientists thought the danger perhaps had passed.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my naive mind, I thought the dramas associated with grant terminations and all of that was a fad that was more last year than this year,\u201d she said. \u201cI hadn\u2019t heard about things like this happening for a while, so I thought it was not something to be concerned about.\u201d<\/p>\n But the lack of an obvious logic to the latest suspensions has increased anxiety even among scientists whose grants remain intact, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of trepidation even in terms of applying for future funding. How do we properly disclose what we need to if the guidance is unclear?\u201d<\/p>\n
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Wheeler Hall on the UC Berkeley campus, as seen in March 2022. Credit: Kelly Sullivan<\/p>\n