The freeze came after a July 29 U.S. Department of Justice finding<\/a> that the university had violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students by providing an inadequate response to alleged antisemitism they faced after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.<\/p>\n The fight over the funding stoppage intensified Friday after the Trump administration demanded that UCLA pay a $1-billion fine,<\/a> among other concessions, to resolve the accusations \u2014 and California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state will sue, calling the proposal \u201cextortion.\u201d <\/p>\n Amid heightened tensions in Westwood, thousands of university academics are in limbo. In total, at least 800 grants, mostly from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, have been frozen.<\/p>\n UCLA scholars described days of confusion as they struggle to understand how the loss of grants would affect their work and scramble to uncover new funding sources \u2014 or roles that would ensure their continued pay, or that of their colleagues. While professors still have jobs and paychecks to draw on, many others, including graduate students, rely on grant funding for their salaries, tuition and healthcare. <\/p>\n At least for the moment, though, several academics told The Times that their work had not yet be interrupted. So far, no layoffs have been announced. <\/p>\n Sydney Campbell, a UCLA cancer researcher whose grant funding has been cut, stands inside the Biomedical Sciences Research building at UCLA. <\/p>\n (Genaro Molina \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Sydney Campbell, a pancreatic cancer researcher and postdoctoral scholar at UCLA\u2019s David Geffen School of Medicine, said her work \u2014 which aims to understand how diet affects the disease \u2014 is continuing for now. She has an independent fellowship that \u201chopefully will protect the majority of my salary.\u201d But others, she said, don\u2019t have that luxury. <\/p>\n \u201cIt is absolutely going to affect people\u2019s livelihoods. I already know of people … with families who are having to take pay cuts almost immediately,\u201d said Campbell, who works for a lab that has lost two National Institutes of Health grants, including one that funds her research. <\/p>\n Pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly of cancers, but Campbell\u2019s work could lead to a better understanding of it, paving the way for more robust prophylactic programs \u2014 and treatment plans \u2014 that may ultimately help tame the scourge. <\/p>\n \u201cUnderstanding how diet can impact cancer development could lead to preventive strategies that we can recommend to patients in the future,\u201d she said. \u201cRight now we can\u2019t effectively do that because we don\u2019t have the information about the underlying biology. Our studies will help us actually be able to make recommendations based on science.\u201d<\/p>\n Campbell\u2019s work \u2014 and that of many others at UCLA \u2014 is potentially groundbreaking. But it could soon be put on hold. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have people who don\u2019t know if they\u2019re going to be able to purchase experimental materials for the rest of the month,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Fears of existential crisis<\/p>\n For some, the cuts have triggered something close to an existential crisis. <\/p>\n After professor Dino Di Carlo, chair of the UCLA Samueli Bioengineering Department, learned about 20 grants were suspended there \u2014 including four in his lab worth about $1 million \u2014 he felt a profound sadness. He said he doesn\u2019t know why his grants were frozen, and there may not be money to pay his six researchers. <\/p>\n So Di Carlo, who is researching diagnostics for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, took to LinkedIn, where he penned a post <\/a>invoking the Franz Kafka novel \u201cThe Trial.\u201d The unsettling tale is about a man named Josef K. who wakes up and finds himself under arrest and then on trial \u2014 with no understanding of the situation.<\/p>\n \u201cLike Josef K., the people actually affected \u2014 the public, young scientists, patients waiting for better treatments and diagnostic tools \u2014 are left asking: What crime did we commit?\u201d wrote Di Carlo. \u201cThey are being judged by a system that no longer explains itself.\u201d<\/p>\n The LinkedIn post quickly attracted dozens of comments and more than 1,000 other responses. Di Carlo, who has been working to find jobs for researchers who depend on paychecks that come from now-suspended grants, said he appreciated the support. <\/p>\n But, goodwill has its limits. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t pay the rent for a student this month,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Di Carlo\u2019s research is partly focused on developing an at-home test that would detect Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, which are on the rise<\/a>. Because no such product is currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he said, people who\u2019ve experienced a tick bite have to wait for lab results to confirm their infection. <\/p>\n \u201cThis delay in diagnosis prevents timely treatment, allowing the disease to progress and potentially lead to long-term health issues,\u201d he said. \u201cA rapid, point-of-care test would allow individuals to receive immediate results, enabling early treatment with antibiotics when the disease is most easily addressed, significantly reducing the risk of chronic symptoms and improving health outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n Di Carlo lamented what he called \u201ca continual assault on the scientific community\u201d by the Trump administration, which has canceled<\/a> billions of dollars in National Institutes of Health funding for universities across the country. <\/p>\n It \u201cjust … hasn\u2019t let up,\u201d Di Carlo said.<\/p>\n Scrambling for funds<\/p>\n Some professors who\u2019ve lost grants have spent long hours scrambling to secure new sources of funding. <\/p>\n Di Carlo said he was in meetings all week to identity which researchers are affected by the cuts, and to try to figure out, \u201cCan we support those students?\u201d He has also sought to determine whether some could be moved to other projects that still have funding, or be given teaching assistant positions, among other options. <\/p>\n He\u2019s not alone in those efforts. Mathematics professor Terence Tao also has lost a grant worth about $750,000. But Tao said that he was more distressed by the freezing of a $25-million grant for UCLA\u2019s Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics. The funding loss for the institute, where Tao is director of special projects, is \u201cactually quite existential,\u201d he said, because the grant is \u201cneeded to fund operations\u201d there. <\/p>\n Tao, who is the James and Carol Collins chair in the College of Letters and Sciences, said the pain goes beyond the loss of funds. \u201cThe abruptness \u2014 and basically the lack of due process in general \u2014 just compounds the damage,\u201d said Tao. \u201cWe got no notice.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n