Over 45 federally funded projects totaling nearly $30 million at the University of Hawaiʻi have been frozen or terminated, or received stop work orders as of April 15, according to documents obtained by Hawaiʻi Public Radio.
These programs span the fields of medicine, climate science, agriculture, and education — and the cuts are still deepening.
By Monday, University of Hawaiʻi President Wendy Hensel announced that the cuts had increased to $36 million, and the affected projects to at least 48.
“This is not just an attack on the university, this is an attack on a way of life that prioritizes science and truth and socioeconomic mobility and all of those wonderful things that we stand for,” she said during an open forum at UH Mānoa.
"That equates to about $250,000 in payroll expenses each month as of right now, and currently, the number of employees is escalating pretty significantly to now 82 employees who have been affected by these changes.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education identified UH as the country's 52nd most likely university to be impacted. Many of the targeted programs are in DEI-A: diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility — an area in which UH excels.
“The university is probably one of the best institutions in the country, in the world when it comes to sustainability, climate change, climate resiliency, and alternative energy, ocean sciences, conservation,” said UH Vice President for Research and Innovation Vassilis Syrmos.
“We are a victim of our own success because this administration does not value research and work in those areas.”
He explained that the federal funding on the chopping block went directly toward improving the health and education of the people of Hawaiʻi — and the funds can’t easily be replaced by the state or the university.
One of the impacted projects belonged to John Berestecky, a microbiology professor at Kapiʻolani Community College, which is part of the University of Hawaiʻi system.
His lab lost about $120,000 in federal funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development to conduct surveillance in Liberia for diseases like Ebola and mpox. It is part of the Stop Spillover project, which aims to prevent the transfer of diseases from animals to humans.
“Especially with the population space that we have, human infections can move very, very quickly,” he said.
“You need to have surveillance to figure out what's going on, and one team's not going to do it… You're going to need multiple, multiple, multiple teams out there looking for this stuff and staying on top of it.”
The Trump administration dismantled USAID and plans to fire nearly all of the agency’s employees.
Berestecky received a letter in February stating his funding had been “terminated for convenience.”
“It's kind of dismissive,” he said. “It's like, ‘You guys are inconvenient.’ It’s a weird way of saying it.”
The nearly 50 projects that have been defunded or paused make up less than 5% of UH’s 1,400 federal contracts and grants. The funding came mostly from USAID and the U.S. departments of energy, agriculture, and health and human services.
Syrmos explained that a total of 6,000 UH employees receive federal funding. That number includes international students whose visa status and financial aid could be jeopardized if their work is terminated or frozen.
Researchers in the targeted areas are bracing for funding cuts, even if they haven’t happened yet.
Postgraduate students Luke Nelson and Connor Schuller are researching Type 2 diabetes in Native Hawaiians at the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine.
“Connor and I rely on that funding to pay for our student stipends, our tuition waivers, and really help us maintain our research life. And if that's gone, we couldn't be here,” Nelson said.
“We are thousands of miles from the mainland and so it's important to have a homegrown talent pool ... If we disable those folks from pursuing funding and getting the ability to hire people and incorporate their research goals and publish them, I think the more we're going to see a slippage of the already skewed demographics.”
Nelson and Schuller’s project isn’t a silo. Syrmos explained that UH has many projects that research health impacts on Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders — all of which are vulnerable.
“Those areas may be targeted, which is unfortunate because if you look at modern medicine, personalized medicine, these multiethnic cohorts and looking at different types of populations is the way to go,” Syrmos said. “It is the future of research.”
Meanwhile, Berestecky, who had over $100,000 in funding canceled, said his projects are running on fumes. He has spent a few thousand dollars of his own money to literally keep the lights on at a two-person lab in Liberia, buying fuel for a generator and reimbursing staff.
“It's just such a devastating wrecking ball that has gone through the research community, the global health research community. The effect has just been devastating,” he said.
“There's also, I guess you could call it like a broken trust. Once burned, it's going to be hard to come back again and pick up those pieces and work on them again.”
Berestecky’s funding enabled him to hire graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and bring a group of undergraduates to villages in Liberia to conduct research.
Now, it’s all up in the air as he looks for funding outside the U.S.
“I don't really know what the rules are anymore,” he said. “The cuts are vast, they're extensive, many of them seem capricious. There doesn't seem to be a logic behind them. It's just cutting. They're just cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting.”
Has your lab or research group been affected by federal funding cuts? Leave us a voicemail at 808-792-8217 or email us at talkback@hawaiipublicradio.org.
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