<\/p>\n
Krishna Pratap Sah, civil engineering graduate student, conducting research in Research I’s CoRE Lab on Oct. 29.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rachel Jones<\/p>\n
Environmental researchers at UCF are starting to feel the effects of the ongoing government shutdown, something that\u00a0could also damage UCF\u2019s preeminent metrics\u00a0for the 2026 fiscal year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr.\u00a0Thomas Wahl, associate professor and lab director\u00a0of the UCF Coastal Risks and Engineering Lab,\u00a0said\u00a0nearly everyone\u00a0in his lab is at least partially\u00a0paid\u00a0by\u00a0federal funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are 10 active projects within the\u00a0CoRE\u00a0Lab<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0study the vulnerability\u00a0of fragile coastal ecosystems and the infrastructure\u00a0needed\u00a0to better\u00a0aid\u00a0coastal\u00a0societies. Wahl said that proposals and funding renewals are constantly being\u00a0submitted.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Wahl said since the majority of the\u00a0CoRE\u00a0Lab\u00a0receives government funding\u00a0and the\u00a0agencies that are needed to review the applications and renewals are not active, it is possible there are projects that will have funding gaps and delays.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this point,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0just a waiting game,” Wahl said. “Working with what we have, people are continuing to do their job and continuing to do their research.\u00a0We hope that we will come to a solution and that things will normalize again in the\u00a0not-too-distant\u00a0future.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Dr. Michelle Gaither, associate professor\u00a0and director of the Gaither Lab,\u00a0echoed\u00a0the sentiments of Wahl.\u00a0The Gaither Lab<\/a> focuses on the study of ecology, evolution and the\u00a0biodiversity\u00a0of marine\u00a0wildlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gaither said she is still able to spend money\u00a0from\u00a0the grant she has with the National Science Foundation, but it could be a problem depending on the duration of the shutdown. However, the grant she had expected to submit\u00a0to the NSF in the coming weeks could be delayed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re probably about a couple of weeks out from submitting a grant, which we can\u2019t submit until the government is up,\u201d Gaither said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The NSF has said that it will not be awarding<\/a> grants<\/a> during this time and it will not be able to\u00a0approve or deny any new proposals until normal federal operations have resumed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Florida State Legislat<\/a>ure<\/a>\u00a0outlined certain metrics that state universities could obtain\u00a0to\u00a0be classified as a \u201cpreeminent\u201d institution and be eligible for\u00a0additional\u00a0state funding\u00a0in 2013.\u00a0A university only\u00a0has to\u00a0achieve twelve of the thirteen metrics to be considered, including total annual research expenditures of $200 million or more.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Krishna Pratap Sah, civil engineering graduate student, conducting research in Research I’s CoRE Lab on Oct. 29.\u00a0 Rachel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4401,115,139,141,140,99,1810],"class_list":{"0":"post-32379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-academics","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-orlando","11":"tag-orlando-headlines","12":"tag-orlando-news","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-science_and_health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}