ASHLAND — Last week, President Donald Trump’s administration Trump announced a federal grants and loans freeze, which his administration reversed less than 24 hours later.
But before that, his administration also issued an executive order freezing the hiring of federal employees. That freeze impacted the Department of Health and Human Services. The National Institutes of Health, the nation’s medical research agency, falls under that department.
Since Trump took office Jan. 20, there were pauses placed on travel and communications for the Department of Health and Human Services, which also impacted the National Institutes of Health. The communications freeze was in place through Feb. 1.
(Below is a PDF of a memo sent to all department heads in Health and Human Services.)
Along with the freezes, the National Institutes of Health paused its grant reviews, multiple news outlets reported. Grant reviews take place to decide what research will be funded. Those grant reviews remain on pause.
Is there anyone local impacted by the grant review pause?
Researchers at universities in Ashland, Knox and Richland counties have research funded, at least in part, by NIH grant funding. But none of those researchers said their work had been impacted by the hiring, communications, travel or grant review pauses.
According to Ashland University biology professor Mason Posner — who received a grant from NIH for his research on cataracts in fiscal year 2024 — NIH’s pause on grant reviews would impact any faculty members who submitted grant proposals and are waiting to hear back about funding.
At AU, director of university grants Stephanie Bull confirmed there were “no pending NIH, NSF or other federal grants during this week’s freeze.”
“None of our current federal grant funders indicated that our awarded projects were at risk, and the freeze has now been lifted,” Bull said.
Posner also said depending on how long grant review freeze is paused, it could impact students’ options for graduate programs and summer internships if the research labs they’re looking at are relying on NIH grant funding.
What research is being funded locally by NIH?
Cataract research at Ashland University
Posner’s lab received a $306,457 NIH grant in the 2024 fiscal year. He said the grant extends over a three-year period, and this year falls in the middle of those three years.
Per his bio on the school’s website, his research has been funded by more than $1.3 million in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health since 2001.
Cataracts account for 50% of blindness, making them the leading cause of blindness worldwide.
Maddie Domenga, a senior biology major at AU, works in Posner’s lab. She said their research is trying to pinpoint the cause of cataracts, in the hopes that eventually, knowing the cause can help prevent it “on a molecular or genetic level.”
Posner said AU’s NIH funding is unique. Part of its purpose is to train undergraduate students, while most NIH grant money goes toward “larger research universities that fund larger labs for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers.”
“The positive impacts on our university from this type of funding would be really helping us do our mission of training undergraduate students to go into science careers,” Posner said. “And this is a key piece of that, is giving them these research opportunities.”
For Domenga, medical school has always been in the cards. She’s already been accepted to Lincoln Memorial University — located in Knoxville, Tennessee — for med school in the fall. But what really cemented her desire to attend med school was her research in Posner’s lab.
She said the experience helped her hone her research techniques and precision. Beyond that, it’s offered her a chance to network and connect with other researchers and see the impact of her work.
“Research is really important, and humankind depends on it,” Domenga said. “We need research in our lives and we need the funding to be able to do that, so hopefully we can keep that.”
Kenyon, Ohio State Mansfield have also received NIH funding
Between fiscal years 2021-2025, two universities in Ashland, Richland and Knox counties have received NIH grants. Recipients were Posner at AU and the biology department at Kenyon College, located in Gambier.
Kenyon College received a $347,805 grant in the 2023 fiscal year.
Yvonne Johnson, Kenyon’s director of public relations and campus communications, responded to inquiries from Source Media Properties about the grant review freeze. She said the school is “monitoring things closely.”
The Ohio State University received several million dollars of NIH grant funding in the last fiscal year. Benjamin Johnson, OSU’s assistant VP of media and public relations, provided the following statement:
Ohio State is fortunate to receive significant funding from the National Institutes of Health as well as a number of other federal agencies. This work continues in the hundreds of laboratories across our university in key areas critical to Ohio and the nation including advanced therapeutics, cancer research, energy, microelectronics, artificial intelligence, mobility and more. We have been, and will continue, to closely monitor communications from our federal partners to ensure that our researchers have the resources necessary to conduct their critical work.
Johnson also said the OSU-Mansfield campus has one ongoing NIH-funded study.
“Prof. Stephen Tobias Abedon is a co-investigator on a study titled ‘The Impact of Bacteriophage Therapy on Wound Infection Dynamics,’ funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,” Johnson said.
“The $3 million project began in fiscal year 2022 and runs through 2027. About $30,000 in funding has been expended for work in Mansfield so far this fiscal year.”
Abedon said while he’s grant-funded on paper, he hasn’t received anything from the grant last year or this year, but he was told current grants would continue as normal.
