9 hours Ago By Dené K. Dryden
ROCHESTER — Federal grant funding underpins America's scientific innovation ecosystem. For decades, it has been key to the United States' prominence in research and development, especially in medicine.But changes during the first few months of President Donald Trump's second term could spell a funding slowdown, affecting local research powerhouses.
The Trump administration has been open about the many research grants it has pulled back from universities and medical research centers across the country, including Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota. Many of those canceled grants focused on HIV, vaccines, people of color or LGBTQ+ populations.While visiting Rochester on April 3, University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham said around $100 million in federal funding had been impacted by stop work orders.
Additionally, fewer dollars are going out the door. An analysis by the Washington Post found that, from late January to late March 2025, NIH funding for new and renewed grants had declined almost 60% compared to the same time period in 2024.A similar analysis found that grants from the National Science Foundation have been reduced by 50%, to the tune of $400 million, over the same time period, Science reports.
But because the process of applying for and receiving research grants can take up to a year, it is not clear if this federal funding decline will persist in the long run, said JoonHyung Cho, assistant vice president for external affairs and communications in the University of Minnesota's Research and Innovation Office."There are certainly concerns with overall shrinking investment into medical research and other research, generally," Cho said. "We can't speculate — does that translate into 10% less, 20% less, 40% less? We don't know yet.
"The federal government is not the sole contributor of scientific research. Businesses and foundations also give to scientific progress.Can they fill the developing gap in federal funding?The local research funding landscapeIn Rochester, Mayo Clinic is the medical research leader.
Across its campuses, more than 5,000 Mayo Clinic employees are involved in research, including 948 physicians.Of the $1.27 billion Mayo Clinic spent on research in 2024, internal funding (including philanthropy and Mayo Clinic Press royalties) contributed almost $518 million, or 40% of the research budget, according to Mayo Clinic's research facts and funding webpage.
A recent example of a research-focused gift: in 2024, Dwight and Dian Diercks gave Mayo Clinic $20 million to, in part, create a fund that helps staff develop cancer-specific artificial intelligence tools.Government dollars — both federal and state — comprise another 40% of Mayo Clinic's research budget ($501 million). Industry and "other extramural" funding round out the rest of the budget.
The Post Bulletin reached out to Mayo Clinic for more information on research funding, including additional data on funding sources. A spokesperson for the health system said "we do not have information to share at this time." !function(){"use strict";window.
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data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); Mayo Clinic in Rochester is the second-greatest recipient of NIH funding in Minnesota.
The University of Minnesota takes that first-place spot."In terms of research volume, we are larger than schools in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa combined," Cho said.Of the university's system-wide $1.
06 billion research budget, almost 60% of funding comes from the NIH, NSF or other federal sources. The majority (54%) of its research dollars go toward the University of Minnesota Medical School or other health sciences programs.At the nearby Hormel Institute — part of the University of Minnesota — funding from the Hormel Foundation makes up about half of its $35 million overall budget for 2024.
"That funding comes to us to pay for our operations, not directly the research that we do," said Elizabeth Fedie, the Hormel Institute's chief of staff. "We still have to get grants, we have to fundraise."Last year, the Austin-based research center received almost $9 million in federal grant dollars, mostly from the NIH.
Community fundraising, such as through the annual Paint the Town Pink events for breast cancer research, provided another $590,000 in 2024. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.
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style.height=d}}}))}(); When it comes to obtaining funding for a research lab, the process can take several months, even a year. When a new faculty member joins the Hormel Institute, for example, applying for funding begins before they even arrive, said Jessica Raines-Jones, the institute's research development director.
"I don't know any of our scientists that aren't applying for grants," Raines-Jones said. "That's always what they're thinking about." When the principal investigator — the lead researcher — applies for funding, Raines-Jones said, they must provide a detailed budget, research plan and the scientific background for their proposed project.
"They also identify pitfalls; 'what if this data I gathered goes in a different direction I wasn't expecting?'" added Fedie. "They will explain all of that in the grant so that it can really show that they're a good steward of the funds they would receive."Depending on the project, writing the grant application can take anywhere from one month to several months, Raines-Jones said.
After that, if it's a federal grant, it could take six more months until it is reviewed."That includes, usually, a peer-review process, and that's when other researchers in the field are evaluating the proposals," Fedie said. "They're really then drilling down into the details of what was proposed, the approach, the prior research done, any preliminary data.
...
They're definitely looking to make sure that anything proposed is important and worthy of the funding." The choice to pursue grants from the federal government, nonprofits or businesses depends on what funding opportunities are available and what the researcher wants to accomplish."They should be diversifying their options by applying to different places, federal and non-federal," Raines-Jones said.
Many federal grants go toward what Cho calls fundamental research, also known as pure or basic science. This research is often exploratory, shared widely and early enough in the scientific process to not have an immediate application. Later down the line, though, that knowledge can lead to a new drug, sustainable fuel or medical device.
"It doesn't necessarily translate directly to commercial value today, but it could 50 years from now," Cho said. "It's a lot of building blocks."Fundamental research makes up the bulk of the Hormel Institute's work.
The business end of researchWhen the fundamental research gets closer to becoming a product, that's when business and industry partners step in."Industry itself is the beneficiary of some of these government-funded research that later become commercialized," Cho said. !function(){"use strict";window.
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data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); Around 3% of the United States' GDP comes from research and development.
In 2022, domestic businesses spent $692 billion on R&D across all sectors — electronics, aerospace, pharmaceuticals and more — according to the NSF. The vast majority of those funds went to applied research and development, steps that come after basic research has laid a scientific foundation for those developments."Discoveries arising from NIH-funded research provide a foundation for the U.
S. biomedical industry," according to the NIH, "which contributes over $69 billion to the U.S.
GDP each year and supports over 7 million jobs."Last year, business and industry partners gave $93.3 million to the University of Minnesota for its research efforts.
"They don't use us as their contract lab," Cho said. "Rather this is where, sometimes, they have challenges, either the product development or the research pipeline, and they're really working with us, solving the problems with the product in mind."One of the university's latest collaborations of this kind is with Medtronic, the large, Minnesota-founded medical device company.
Announced in December 2024, that partnership aims to "rapidly advance discoveries from the lab to demonstrate innovations that are life-saving and contribute to people’s health around the globe."Foundations and the financially well-offIf federal dollars fund science early on in the pipeline, and industry steps in near the end, foundations and charities often play a role in the middle."They are looking more towards the next stage" after the basic research is complete, Cho said.
"We call (it) the 'valley of death' — sometimes the funding dries out because it's not fundamental science, or it's not 'business' enough."Nonprofits that focus on particular diseases or conditions — the American Cancer Society, for example — can provide funding in that "valley of death.""Patient-driven funding (is) really filling that gap," Cho said.
With the potential for fewer federal opportunities for research funding on the horizon, can foundations, or even businesses, funnel more support toward basic research?Two of the world's largest philanthropic organizations, the Gates Foundation and the Novo Nordisk Foundation, have answered this question in the context of the Trump administration's dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, which addressed health issues overseas.
A representative for the Gates Foundation told Reuters that there is no foundation "that can provide the funding, workforce capacity, expertise or leadership that the United States has historically provided to combat and control deadly diseases and address hunger and poverty around the world."USAID spent $21.7 billion in fiscal year 2024, less than half of what the NIH spent ($48.
2 billion).The Gates Foundation declined the Post Bulletin's request for comment."The idea that business is going to come in and save pure research, or that wealthy people are going to come in and save pure research .
.. it just seems naïve," said Beverly Moran, a professor emerita of tax law at Vanderbilt University.
Even if wealthy individuals could divert billions of dollars toward research, Moran said, would they?"If you look at, specifically, the sort of research that isn't going to make a lot of money for somebody or isn't going to produce a lot of prestige, you don't see wealthy people giving money that way," Moran said.Moran referenced the United States' Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century, when big-name philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller spent large chunks of their wealth on science and higher education.
"If you look at where the money went," Moran said, "it didn't go for pure research."Right now, Cho said, the government, businesses and nonprofits are "complimentary to each other" in their roles as research benefactors."One doesn't replace the other," he said.
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