Four pages and 50 words. That was how much I had to remove from my F31 application to submit it again. Doesn’t seem like a big deal, right? But those four pages and 50 words were the parts of my application that I was most proud of.
As a queer Hispanic woman, I was eligible to apply for a predoctoral grant through what is — sorry, what was — called an NIH F31 diversity grant. These grants were meant to support Ph.D. students from marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds, including race, disability, socioeconomic status, and geographic area.
The F31 grant can provide funding for up to five years to help the student, the academic institution, and their adviser pay for things like tuition, stipends, and conference travel expenses. But thanks to the Trump administration’s purge of anything “woke,” the NIH F31 diversity grant no longer exists.
There’s only one word to describe how this feels to me and other affected students: heartbreaking.
Up until recently, when a student applied for an NIH predoctoral F31 grant, they could either apply through the diversity or the parent, non-diversity track. All this meant was that students from less advantaged backgrounds could identify themselves during their application. No preference was given to people who applied through the diversity track, and there was only one pot of money.
But the process got caught up in the Trump administration’s attack on federal funding and efforts to dismantle DEI. Starting in January, scientists began to receive notices of grant review sessions being postponed or canceled. Some grants were terminated. During the following months, a communication freeze between the NIH and scientists was instituted, leaving many researchers desperately waiting for news about their grants.
Amid all this, it was clear that these diversity grants were on their way to being canceled. But we Ph.D. students held on to the slim chance that wouldn’t become reality.
I began to worry that my application might be in jeopardy in February. Early that month, I received an email that my grant was assigned a study section, where it would be reviewed by a panel of experts — great news. Three days later, however, I received another email informing me that there was a change in my status, and my grant no longer had a study section assignment. My adviser and I were crushed. This grant was my only hope to get any funding to support my time as a neuroscience Ph.D. student.
Just days after that bad news, my grant was magically reassigned to the original study section — my hope restored. One month later, I received another email from the NIH that my grant was once again pulled from the study section. At this point, the NIH rollercoaster had made me sick. I wanted to get off.
My adviser recommended that I reach out to the NIH directly and ask for clarification on what was happening. In response, I received word that the F31 diversity application had been discontinued — information that was not made public by the NIH at that point in time.
I made the decision to withdraw my F31 diversity application just in time to scrub those four pages and 50 words from my application to submit my grant for a third time, but now through the non-diversity F31 grant. I couldn’t help but think it was exactly what the Trump administration wanted me to do: erase the background that is so important to me, and to my science.
In late May, the NIH officially announced that the diversity pathway had officially ended.
I was not alone on this NIH rollercoaster. In fact, I was luckier than many others.
Nadia Nikulin, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University, is a first-generation student from a rural area, both of which qualify her to apply to the F31 diversity grant. Nadia was also recently diagnosed with heart failure and is a single mother of two children. She also had an F31 diversity grant in the same application cycle as me, and received the bombardment of hot and cold emails from the NIH.
The lack of communication made it extremely difficult for Nadia and her adviser to determine the best course of action. Leave the application in this cycle and hope and pray that it gets reviewed? Pull it in time to remove the diverse parts of the application and re-submit? At the end of the day, the NIH made that decision for her.
“It was the end of May when I realized that my application had been withdrawn by the NIH. I was really, really upset, because at this point, I can’t reset. It’s too late, right? I’ll be graduating hopefully in a year,” Nadia told me. “I should have suspected that this was going to happen.”
Meanwhile, other students experienced another disaster — the cancellation of already funded F31 diversity grants.
Laura Mata López, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at Johns Hopkins, was awarded the F31 diversity grant on her first submission, only to have her funding canceled in April, re-instated (via an American Civil Liberties Union case) in July, and canceled again in August, when the Supreme Court voted to allow the cutting of research grants associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“These systems never wanted us here, and they never will truly want us here,” she said.
Olivia Lutz is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago. She studies the body’s balance system in a healthy state to help predict what might happen in a diseased state. Olivia was awarded the F31 diversity grant after receiving an almost perfect score on her first submission. But one day in May, she was notified via email that her funding was canceled. She wasn’t surprised.
“I knew it was only going to be a matter of time until mine was next,” she said.
At a time when diversity initiatives are being weaponized, the unraveling of this program represents another barrier that continues to keep people like us from having a seat at the table.
After removing myself from the diversity application track, I spent the summer waiting to see how my non-diversity F31 grant was scored. I figured that this time I had a good chance at getting funded, despite being an older student on my way to graduating soon. My first grant was scored well, and I had resubmitted a new one that addressed all of the reviewers comments. For this third try, all I had to do was remove all mention of diversity about myself and about my future goals as a scientist.
But when I checked my score I saw that my latest submission was not even discussed in the study section. I can’t help but wonder whether that was because the reviewers knew I had previously applied under the diversity mechanism.
As a fifth-year student, I am able to finish out my final year of graduate school, but if I end up needing more time for research, it would be more difficult to stay. At my institution, and at many others, it takes on average more than five years to complete a Ph.D. Now, I am thinking of how to wrap up in such a short period of time to graduate under five years.
Why did I even spend the time erasing myself from my application? Maybe the NIH could see past my mask? Maybe my research wasn’t actually good enough to be funded? Was it all worth it? These questions will forever play on a loop in my brain.
The original motivation for creating the F31 diversity grant was to provide more funding to scientists from marginalized backgrounds. But there was no money allocated for this purpose. All the diversity grant application was doing was allowing diverse students a chance for a seat at the table — not guaranteeing them that they would be fed.
By identifying ourselves and our science, perhaps students like me ended up giving the NIH an excuse to remove us from the table.
Marissa Russo is a former STAT intern supported by the AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship. She is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate.
