NSF restricts – The US National Science Foundation has placed “Future Awards to Organization on Hold” on Duke, Harvard, Princeton and Yale, sharply slowing new funding while many proposals stall in its Office of Award Management. Scientists and university leaders say they wer
For months. researchers at Duke. Harvard. Princeton and Yale have been watching their NSF funding pipeline slow down—quietly at first. then more unmistakably after an internal NSF note appeared on 9 April. By late May. the message was still sitting in the agency’s database. and by 28 May it was only partly lifted: the “Future Awards to Organization on Hold” note was removed for Duke. Harvard and Yale. and a few grants for researchers at Harvard and Duke were released.
The shift matters in practical ways that are hard to capture in headlines. Some teams can keep operating on existing awards, but new projects—especially those that depend on fresh start-up funds, early-career hiring, or scheduled equipment purchases—can lose momentum when approvals stall.
Internal NSF documents obtained by Nature show that on 9 April the NSF’s Office of Award Management (OAM). the unit that finalizes grants and handles their finances. put limits on new funding to Duke University in Durham. North Carolina; Harvard University in Cambridge. Massachusetts; Princeton University in New Jersey; and Yale University in New Haven. Connecticut. In the NSF database, a note attached to the universities read: “Future Awards to Organization on Hold.”.
Since then, little fresh funding has been made available to these institutions by the NSF.
The NSF’s annual budget is US$8.8 billion, yet it has not said publicly why it restricted new grants to these particular universities or when the restriction would end. The agency declined a request for comment.
Last year. the Trump administration froze or terminated research funding for several US institutions. alleging violations of federal anti-discrimination policy. including a failure to protect students against antisemitism. Some institutions struck deals with the administration to restore funds. Harvard—where about 75% of its research grants were terminated by the NSF—sued. A federal judge ruled last September that the terminations were illegal and permanently banned US agencies. including the NSF. from taking similar action against Harvard in the future.
Legal scholars speaking to Nature said the latest restriction could violate that ruling. David Super. a specialist in administrative law at Georgetown University in Washington DC. said: “The administration has bent itself into pretzels to continue actions against universities it dislikes. even in the face of court orders.”.
The White House denied that the administration is taking action against the four universities.
Behind the hold sits a more specific story of process—one that researchers feel when deadlines collide with bureaucracy. An internal NSF list shows the OAM has stalled 33 research proposals by researchers from the four universities or their collaborators.
Grant-making at the NSF has been slow this fiscal year due to a 43-day government shutdown in late 2025 and the White House delaying the release of the agency’s budget. But inside the OAM. processing has been consistent: agency staff members who spoke to Nature say research grants take ten days to finalize. on average.
The proposals tied to Duke, Harvard, Princeton and Yale have been held for an average of 91 days. Many were stalled even before the 9 April hold was applied to these universities.
To reach the OAM. proposals must be evaluated and found meritorious by a panel of independent scientists. then endorsed by NSF programme officers and approved by agency leadership. Agency staff members who spoke to Nature on condition of anonymity. because they fear reprisal. said the type of hold being placed on new funds to the four universities is rare and used only in extreme situations. such as when a university closes or fails an audit.
Even as new awards slowed, scientists working on existing NSF grants could still access funds when needed. That distinction—between money already committed and money that hasn’t yet been approved—helps explain why the disruption can feel both real and partial.
Scientists at Duke, Harvard, Princeton and Yale are frequent recipients of NSF grants. In 2024, the four universities received a combined 218 new grants from the agency. But so far this fiscal year, the four institutions have received 13 new grants combined. And no awards have gone to scientists at Duke or Harvard since 9 April.
Princeton’s dean for research, Peter Schiffer, said in a statement that the agency “has not informed us of any blanket action involving our pipeline of NSF-funded projects”. The other three universities did not respond to queries by the time this story was published.
At affected universities, researchers were reluctant to speak to Nature. None was aware of the block on new funding before Nature reached out.
About 85% of the stalled proposals are in mathematics, physical sciences and engineering. Several involve quantum information science, a domain the Trump administration has said it wants to prioritize. They include a five-year grant intended to fund a promising early-career researcher. and one to support a quantum centre at Yale.
New grants may not be the only type in limbo. At least one ‘continuing grant’—money provided annually as part of a multi-year award—was also described as stuck.
One of the most immediate human consequences appears in Yale’s Viral Emergence Research Initiative (VERENA). a multidisciplinary programme led by Yale that aims to predict the next pandemic threats. The initiative is still awaiting last year’s payment of more than $2 million from the NSF. Agency staff members told Nature that the increment was approved by a programme officer on 20 January but is still waiting to be processed at the OAM.
Colin Carlson, a disease ecologist who leads VERENA at Yale, said many members of the 40-person team have left the programme. If the money isn’t released, he said he will have to lay off the remainder at Yale over the next few months.
The four universities are not the only ones that have faced disruptions in 2026. Last month, the NSF suspended 18 research grants to the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), first reported by Berkeleyside, a non-profit news outlet.
The suspension letter sent to UC Berkeley by the OAM on 13 April, seen by Nature, alleges that the principal investigators for each of the grants failed to “properly disclose all sources of foreign funding” from countries including France, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Markita Landry, a biochemist at UC Berkeley, leads one of the suspended grants. Her proposal would use nanoparticles to deliver molecular genome-editing tools into plants. The letter says the suspension occurred due to undisclosed funding from the United Kingdom. which she said baffled her: “I cannot recall any funding that I’ve ever had from the UK. ” she says.
The NSF declined to comment about the suspension of grants at UC Berkeley.
As the NSF’s hold note has come and gone for some universities—removed from the database for Duke. Harvard and Yale on 28 May—the broader question remains: what happens to the proposals that have already been stalled. the teams waiting on approvals. and the scientists trying to plan the next step of their work with funding that may never arrive on schedule.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on May 27, 2026.
NSF Office of Award Management grants Duke University Harvard University Princeton University Yale University quantum information science VERENA pandemic research administrative law research funding
So they blocked the grants for those schools? Wild.
I don’t even get it, like did NSF hate those universities or something? Seems like the money just disappeared mid-project and now people are stuck waiting.
Hold on, isn’t NSF supposed to help science broadly though? If they only paused Duke/Harvard/Princeton/Yale, that sounds like favoritism or politics, not “process.” Also the article says “removed for Duke Harvard and Yale” like wait which one is it? Confusing.
This sounds like red tape as usual. Like they put the awards on hold and then “partly lifted” it later, which is basically them saying maybe? I’m sure the proposals aren’t even the issue, it’s just paperwork in an office. Meanwhile researchers gotta delay hiring and equipment which yeah that’s how it always works, everybody panics for months and then it’s “released.”