MADISON, Wis. — Days before his flight to Argentina, a UW-Madison researcher lost a Fulbright award from a federal funding freeze.

Under President Trump’s administration, the U.S. State Department froze funds in February for international education programs. That includes the Fulbright Program, which allows scholars to conduct research overseas.

For one UW-Madison researcher, the freeze put more than a year’s worth of planning down the drain.

“There’s a lot of anxiety in the scientific world now,” said UW-Madison professor emeritus, Richard Lindroth.

In fall of 2024, Lindroth was approved for his Fulbright Specialist Program award, which pairs U.S. scholars with institutions to share their experience overseas. He was supposed to be in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for most of March of 2025.

“Three or four weeks before my March 1st departure, I contacted Fulbright and asked, is my funding secure? Am I still good to go? And they said, as far as they knew, everything was fine,” said Lindroth.

But four days before Richard Lindroth’s flight, an email from Fulbright wiped his research project off the calendar.

“That was really a head-spinning moment. Very disruptive, very disappointing for both the host institution and ourselves,” said Lindroth.

The email reads in part, quote:

“I regret to inform you that this project will be cancelled due to a change in United States’ government priorities.”

Lindroth researches how climate change impacts the chemistry of plants and their nutritional value in foods that humans and animals eat.

He says he tried to get answers on why their project was cut. It’s titled Integrating Chemical Ecology and Climate Change Research. He suspects it has to do with the term “climate change.”

“We now know that those terms are targeted for defunding projects. So, even though Fulbright would not come out and say that’s what happened, pretty strong suspicion that that’s where it laid,” said Lindroth.

Lindroth says projects like his one in Argentina help push the needle forward for scientific discovery.

“The U.S. has always been a benefactor of science in terms of training scientists as well as internationalizing scientific efforts,” said Lindroth.

He says his colleagues and fellow scientists have growing concerns for the long-term repercussions.

“I think it’s just kind of a black eye for the United States now that they are defunding these types of projects. It doesn’t look good for us as a country,” said Lindroth.

Lindroth said he has no hope that his Fulbright will be put back on the calendar because it was canceled and not paused.