UConn Loses $95 Million in Federal Research Funding as Trump Administration Cuts Grants

The University of Connecticut has lost $95 million in federal research funding over the past year as the Trump administration canceled previously approved grants and withheld funding from universities nationwide, according to university officials.

The cuts have directly impacted more than 1,700 faculty, staff and graduate assistants across UConn and UConn Health whose salaries are paid in part by federal grants and programs, according to a September memo from UConn’s Interim Vice President for Finance Reka Wrynn.

UConn lost $41 million from research grant terminations and unexpected non-renewals, said Lindsay DiStefano, interim vice president of research. New research awards dropped $54 million in fiscal year 2025 compared to fiscal year 2024, bringing the total loss to $95 million as of Oct. 15, 2025, according to DiStefano.

“The research being done at UConn is important — not just to our university, but it makes actual impacts,” DiStefano said. “It makes impacts across the state, across the country, across the world, and making sure that people are supported and continuing to do this incredible work is essential.”

The federal cuts have reflected the Trump administration’s opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion practices as well as greater scrutiny of spending in areas such as climate change and public health since taking office in January 2025, according to the source material.

Professor Jennifer McGarry, who has spent more than 20 years running a federally funded nutrition and physical activity program for low-income families in the Greater Hartford area, received an email in late September notifying her that her grant had been cut. UConn received $2 million per year from the Department of Agriculture for the effort, part of a larger $5 million statewide grant.

“You’re operating with this level of stress, anxiety, responsibility for yourself and the people that you work with to do the work that you do,” McGarry said. “There’s all the people that would have been helped, supported, kept alive, if that work continued — so that’s pretty heavy to think about.”

Political science professor Jeffrey Dudas had a two-year $135,000 grant from the National Endowment of Humanities canceled in April after completing the first year. The grant funded a writing and podcast project examining how artificial intelligence appeared in popular culture over the years.

“We got a one-sentence notice saying that the grant had been canceled, and there was no explanation given,” said Dudas, who serves as president of UConn’s chapter of American Association of University Professors. “There was no reasoning.”

More than 1,400 endowment grants valued at $427 million have been terminated nationwide as of April 8, 2025, according to a database created by the Association for Computers and Humanities.

Jason Chang, a professor of history and Asian American Studies who heads the department of social and critical inquiry, had a five-year minority-serving grant from the U.S. Department of Education cut in September. The grant, which Chang had held for two years, funded programming at UConn Hartford to increase perseverance, retention and graduation rates for students.

“We know how impactful these programs are, and we’re working to try to reconfigure and reconnect them and rescale the project that’s sustainable with what we have right now, so that we can continue serving students,” Chang said.

While UConn has not been individually targeted by Trump or engaged in high-profile battles with the president like other universities such as Harvard, Columbia and Brown, it has been impacted by the administration’s unprecedented research grant cuts and changes to federal funding.