A recent White House report recommends changing how federal research grants are awarded by directing more money to research groups outside traditional universities.
The July 21 report, “Science: A New Golden Age,” does not recommend specific university funding cuts. It says university labs remain key for training and basic research but may lack resources for large interdisciplinary projects. As of the time of publication, the document has not caused any changes to University federal grants, according to a University spokesperson.
Additionally, a budget memo in the report recommends prioritizing rewarding long-term grants, which would provide all funding to research teams up front, rather than smaller grants renewed on a regular basis. According to the memo, this would allow researchers “to pursue bold, ambitious projects whose most important results may take years to emerge.”
A federal push to support collaborative research is already underway. UT recently received funding for five projects within the Genesis Mission, an initiative that unites government, industry, academia and philanthropy to accelerate research breakthroughs, according to a University news release. UT is a leader in two projects and will collaborate on three others with industry and government partners.
Federal funding accounted for over $847 million, or 62%, of the University’s $1.37 billion in research expenditures in the 2025 fiscal year, according to the University’s Texas Research by the Numbers website. A University spokesperson said the figure counts only what is spent during a given year and may not represent the full value of grants received since some research grants are spent over many years.
Jaquelin Dudley, professor and associate director of the LaMontagne Center for Infectious Disease, wrote in an email she is concerned federal research priorities have shifted away from fields such as human disease research and toward artificial intelligence, defense and technology. She wrote that federal grants from the National Institutes of Health have funded her research for more than 40 years.
“Although these areas are very important, a minor portion of the federal budget is directed toward health-related research compared to defense,” Dudley wrote.
Dudley wrote that reduced funding could weaken responses to outbreaks and limit a laboratory’s ability to support its students. Higher education and research institutions are also uniquely positioned to take more potential financial risks in research, something which private entities may not feel as comfortable doing, she said.
“Many experiments fail because we don’t know or control all of the variables involved,” Dudley wrote. “Private companies need to be efficient because their purpose is to make money for their stockholders.”
Peter Stone, professor and chair of the department of computer science, said the effects of changing how funding is distributed depend heavily on how it is implemented.
“We’re going to have to wait and see, and also do what we can to influence things in a direction that will allow the opportunities for the best scientific research to be supported,” Stone said.