NSF Director Resigns Amid Mass Grant Cuts, Looming Layoffs

Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the National Science Foundation, resigned yesterday, 16 months before the end of his six-year term. His announcement came one week after the agency announced the termination of more than 400 grants deemed to be related to diversity, equity, and inclusion or combating misinformation. Hundreds more terminations are expected today.

In addition, President Donald Trump is poised to propose a 55% cut to NSF’s budget, and the Department of Government Efficiency had asked Panchanathan for a plan to lay off half of the agency’s staff, Science reported.

Panchanathan seemed to allude to the cuts in an internal letter announcing his resignation, writing, “While NSF has always been an efficient agency, we still took the challenge of identifying other possible efficiencies and reducing our commitments to serve the scientific community even better.”

He added, “This is a pivotal moment for our nation in terms of global competitiveness. NSF is an extremely important investment to make U.S. scientific dominance a reality. … A thoughtful approach to efficiencies and investments is incredibly important.”

House Science Committee Chair Brian Babin (R-TX) issued a statement thanking Panchanathan for his service at NSF, adding, “He has also worked tirelessly to broaden participation in STEM fields while maintaining the gold-standard merit-review process that makes American science the envy of the world.”

Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said in a press release that Panchanathan led NSF “through an era of great progress,” but things have been “far bleaker” in the last three months. “Director Panchanathan’s contributions to the scientific enterprise in the first five years of his tenure are vanishing before our eyes thanks to President Trump’s anti-science crusade, and the damage will take decades to undo,” she added.

Following Panchanathan’s resignation, NSF re-offered deferred resignation deals to staff, warning of “future restructuring, staffing reductions, and constrained budget environments” that will “constrain future opportunities” at the agency.

Reversing course on DEI

NSF began reviewing its grants in January to identify possible noncompliance with Trump’s executive orders, but the arrival of DOGE at the agency appears to have precipitated the terminations.

DOGE stated that NSF canceled 402 “wasteful DEI grants” in a post on X last Friday, the day of NSF’s announcement. The New York Times reported that the list of terminated grants totaled over 400 and a crowdsourced list includes hundreds. Based on the crowdsourced list, the divisions with the most grant cuts currently include Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings, Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Computer and Network Systems, Engineering Education and Centers, and Equity for Excellence in STEM.

In announcing the terminations last week, NSF said it will no longer fund grants that involve engaging with people based on characteristics that are protected from discrimination under various laws, such as race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It will also terminate research that “could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advances a preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.” The announcement also notes that the grant terminations are not limited to, DEI and misinformation. The administration has targeted climate research grants at other agencies based on a January executive order.

The agency stated that such grants no longer “effectuate” agency priorities, language that has been used by the Trump administration as a legal mechanism to terminate active awards. A grant termination notice shared on Bluesky adds that the decision is final and not subject to appeal, though one researcher noted that agencies must provide “an opportunity to object and provide information challenging the action.”

In response to the terminations, Lofgren called on NSF to “reverse course immediately” to protect the agency’s integrity. “The American people deserve a scientific enterprise free from political interference, where expert scientists and engineers participate in a merit-based review process to recommend the most innovative and promising research proposals,” she stated.

NSF has been particularly involved in funding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts through its “broader impacts” grant review criterion, which assesses a project’s potential to benefit society based on seven goals, including expanding participation of women and individuals from underrepresented groups in STEM. Those goals are defined by a legal statute that cannot be removed or altered without action by Congress.

The agency acknowledged this goal in its announcement but indicated that it will no longer fund activities to only engage with these groups. Rather, these activities may only be conducted “as part of broad engagement activities” that are “open and available to all Americans,” the announcement states. Furthermore, grantees may expand STEM participation based on non-protected characteristics, such as institutional type, geography, socioeconomic status, and career stage, but NSF cautioned that such activities “cannot indirectly preference or exclude individuals or groups based on protected characteristics.”

“Projects that aim to create more opportunities for more people in every region of the country to participate in science and technology remain an important part of NSF’s mission,” the agency stated.

NSF also stated that research with a focus on protected characteristics is permissible when such characteristics are “intrinsic to the research question” and the research is aligned with agency priorities: for instance, research on technology to assist individuals with disabilities may be supported even when the research subject recruitment is limited to those with disabilities.

NSF operates programs that broaden participation based on protected characteristics that are explicitly established in law, which the agency appears to be punting to Congress to make the final decision on. NSF stated that they will continue to operate these programs if they are “prioritized” in NSF appropriations language, which may mean that appropriators need to create new line items to keep funding these programs.