GRAND FORKS — Researchers and administrators at the University of North Dakota remain on edge this week as yet another federal decree threatens to disrupt millions of dollars in medical research funding.
A federal judge on Monday
making deep cuts to federal grant funding for universities, medical centers and other research institutions, including North Dakota’s two research universities.
The National Institutes of Health announced last week it would place a cap on indirect costs funding for new and existing grants.
At UND, the order could disrupt research into a host of health topics, including efforts to combat illnesses like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
UND is by-far the largest recipient of NIH funding in North Dakota, receiving 19 of the 34 NIH grants issued during the last federal fiscal year, according to the NIH’s RePORT tool. NDSU, the next largest, received 12.
Vice President for Research and Economic Development Scott Snyder said the university had $14.7 million in NIH-funded research expenditures during the 2023-24 school year, around $2.8 million of which was spent on indirect costs.
Also known as facilities and administrative costs, indirect costs funding is attached to most federal research grants and pays for a broad swath of research-related expenses, like making sure the research facility is compliant with federal rules and regulations on data security and privacy and animal care (think: lab mice).
That funding also covers maintaining and operating expensive lab equipment used in federal research — like, for instance, UND’s electricity-use-heavy nanofoundry.
“This is a reflection that since we’re doing federally-funded research in that facility, the feds will cover part of that expense,” Snyder said.
The amount the federal government covers is based on a preestablished rate applied to select expenses. Indirect costs funding is given to universities and other research institutions in addition to the research award.
Snyder said using a uniform rate for indirect costs is based on a regular audit of research costs and is meant to cut through the red tape that would be created by accounting for indirect costs on every federally-funded research project.
The NIH wants to cap every university’s indirect costs rate at 15%. UND has a federal indirect cost rate of 41%, which is lower than many flagship universities; some private universities, like Harvard, have indirect cost rates as high as 69%.
Capping the NIH’s indirect costs rate would shift millions of dollars in research cost back onto research institutions with little notice.
For instance, a 15% cap on last year’s NIH indirect costs would put UND on the hook for another $1.8 million, based on last year’s figures.
Such a cut, Snyder says, could require cutbacks on research across the board.
“Going from 41% to 15% means, almost certainly, that not only does the institution get less money, but individual laboratories are going to be getting less money,” said Jonathan Geiger, a Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor in the biomedical sciences department at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
NIH funding paid for a broad swath of research projects at UND last year, including several focused on the brain and the nervous system.
In recent years, Geiger said, biomedical sciences labs have studied neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, stroke, multiple sclerosis and ALS.
Last year, UND researchers published a study examining the link between a broad class of commonly-prescribed drugs and neurodegenerative diseases.
“You can talk in the abstract, but a lot of people … have loved ones and friends who have suffered and died from these conditions,” Geiger said. “The NIH is the premier funding agency in the world — we’re the envy of the world — and this is going to hurt us.”
Members of North Dakota’s Republican congressional delegation have backed the Trump administration’s actions, saying that limiting “overhead” spending will free up more dollars for research funding.
“It is our understanding that this policy change limits the amount of overhead or indirect costs to 15% of the grant received, allowing more taxpayer dollars to go directly to the research being conducted,” read a statement issued to the Herald from Sen. John Hoeven.
Rep. Julie Fedorchak also told the Herald the cuts would free up taxpayer dollars for research.
“All North Dakotans that I work with and connect with, they’re concerned always about overhead costs on grants,” she said Tuesday. “If it’s cancer research or research on diabetes, or whatever current, contemporary challenge we’re facing and devoting research dollars to, we want the money as much as possible going to that research to develop solutions and treatments, and not rent.”
Fedorchak also repeatedly asserted the funding cuts would not affect existing grants, only new ones.
The NIH announcement states both new and existing grant awards are subject to the 15% rate “retroactive to the date of issuance of this Supplemental Guidance,” Feb. 7.
University administrators like Snyder have interpreted the NIH’s announcement to mean effective immediately for all current grants.
Fedorchak’s interpretation could very well be true, Snyder said, but there’s been no further guidance from the NIH to clarify the meaning of the order since it was issued.
Snyder said Thursday he had not yet talked directly with any of the state’s members of Congress but had been in contact with legislative aides from two elected officials’ offices.
A Fedorchak spokesperson told the Herald in an email her office had “been in contact” with UND and NDSU, while Hoeven’s office said they “expect to have further discussions” with North Dakota’s research universities ahead of Senate appropriations hearings. A spokesperson from Sen. Kevin Cramer’s office said the senator was unavailable to discuss the issue.
So far, NIH grant-funded research at UND has not been affected by the Trump administration order.
Snyder said the university was current on its monthly reimbursement requests to the NIH when the order to cap indirect costs spending came down.
He says it’s too early to say how the university will respond to the NIH announcement, which was enjoined by a court order within hours of going into effect.
“We have not had enough time since this dropped on Friday and then was enjoined (Monday), we haven’t had enough time to sit and say, ‘Okay, if this happens, then what’s next?’” Snyder said.
The now-blocked NIH cost-cutting is the second time in a matter of weeks that federal medical research funding at UND has come under threat.
NIH funding was among the federal dollars the university
when the Trump administration issued an executive order freezing the disbursement of federal grants and loans last month.
The future of that order is continuing to play out in court: on Tuesday, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals
rejected a Trump administration request
to pause a judge’s order requiring the government to continue disbursing those funds.
The White House had initially indicated it was rescinding the funding freeze, only to continue withholding billions in defiance of the Jan. 31 judge’s order.
Geiger says disrupting research funding to UND’s laboratories could have long-lasting detrimental effects on the university’s research efforts. Scientific training is “not cheap and not transient,” he noted.
He invoked the second law of thermodynamics.
“If you don’t put energy into a system, it falls apart, basically,” Geiger said. “And without constantly putting energy into a system and taking care of it, things will fall apart very fast, and to rebuild it will be a much slower process and more expensive.”
Snyder worries that the 15% indirect costs cap could spread to more federal agencies, further compromising university research after the university has spent years trying to boost its research portfolio. (On Thursday, the university was reclassified as an “R1” research university by the Carnegie Foundation, a hoped-for mark of prestige for UND.)
UND received around $65 million in federal research grants last year, Snyder said, in areas including health care, energy, and national security.
An indirect costs cap on all of those grants would leave the university $10 to $20 million short, necessitating research cuts or increases to tuition.
“That research is very important to our state and our society, and that’s why this is so disturbing they might cut this back,” Snyder said. “Because, again, then we’ve got a very big financial hole to fill if we’re going to continue doing this.”
