NSF Grant Suspensions at UCLA total $90M lost in value
Mridula (Mally) Shan · August 1, 2025
The Trump administration suspended[1] 280 active[2] National Science Foundation grants to the University of California - Los Angeles this week. The total grant value from these grants amount to over $179 million, with $90 million remaining unspent and lost in value. This brings the total number of terminations in our NSF database to over 2600 and $1.37 billion in total value.
Impacted Fields
Most of the UCLA grant terminations were from the Mathematical, Physical Sciences, Computer/Information Sciences, Geosciences, and Engineering, with grant values from these directorates alone totalling over $130M. A large part of these were a single $25M grant for UCLA Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, which had more than a year and $5M remaining. Grants in directorates like Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences were also greatly impacted, with the Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences having a total grant value of $5.7M.
The adminstration already terminated 7 grants to UCLA earlier this year, worth $9.6M, most of which funded university’s Center for Diverse Leadership in Science.
| Directorate Abbreviation | Directorate | Terminated Grants | Grants Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| MPS | Mathematical and Physical Sciences | 76 | $63,601,307 |
| CISE | Computer and Information Science and Engineering | 65 | $32,511,075 |
| GEO | Geosciences | 53 | $29,182,418 |
| ENG | Engineering | 34 | $18,855,421 |
| SBE | Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences | 22 | $8,543,616 |
| BIO | Biological Sciences | 19 | $13,927,753 |
| TIP | Technology, Innovation and Partnerships | 7 | $2,043,556 |
| EDU | STEM Education | 3 | $789,910 |
| OD | Office of the Director | 1 | $299,347 |
Top 10 NSF Directorates of the new UCLA grant terminations
| Division | Terminated Grants | Grants Value |
|---|---|---|
| Mathematical Sciences | 37 | $37,442,834 |
| Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences | 29 | $14,807,750 |
| Information and Intelligent Systems | 23 | $11,676,383 |
| Computer and Network Systems | 22 | $11,210,173 |
| Chemistry | 17 | $11,647,568 |
| Computing and Communication Foundations | 17 | $8,720,510 |
| Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences | 15 | $5,727,999 |
| Earth Sciences | 12 | $6,132,570 |
| Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems | 11 | $7,027,961 |
| Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems | 10 | $4,637,454 |
Top 10 NSF Divisions of the new UCLA grant terminations
Grant Information
For the impacted grants, there was a relatively equal amount of standard and continuining grants that were impacted, as shown in the summary table below.
| Award Types | Terminated Grants | Grants Value |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Grant | 189 | $93,401,058 |
| Continuing Grant | 91 | $76,353,345 |
Distribution of Award Types for UCLA Terminations
After looking through the project titles, we see that although the largest number of terminations at UCLA were Collaborative Research - shared projects with other institutions, whose impacts will reverberate beyond UCLA. Also heavily impacted were CAREER grants which suppot early-career faculty.
| Grant Group | Terminated Grants | Grants Value |
|---|---|---|
| Collaborative Research | 83 | $33,769,711 |
| CAREER | 38 | $18,799,119 |
| I-Corps | 4 | $200,000 |
| GEM | 3 | $1,482,211 |
| RAISE | 3 | $3,297,737 |
| ATD | 2 | $280,000 |
| CPS | 2 | $899,997 |
| CSR | 2 | $1,214,856 |
| NSF-SNSF | 2 | $910,000 |
| NeTS | 2 | $1,150,000 |
Top 10 Grant Groups for new UCLA grant terminations
Topics
Looking at the program names, project titles and abstracts of the terminated grants at UCLA demonstrate that much of the impacted work was in the technological and mathematical fields. Yet a word cloud of the most frequent words in project titles and abstracts shows the scientific range of these projects, and the potential applications of such fundamental research in other fields, like medicine and geosciences.
| Program Name | Terminated Grants | Grants Value |
|---|---|---|
| MAGNETOSPHERIC PHYSICS | 11 | $3,180,150 |
| Networking Technology and Syst | 7 | $3,012,568 |
| CSR-Computer Systems Research | 6 | $3,980,488 |
| Climate & Large-Scale Dynamics | 6 | $5,376,984 |
| Robust Intelligence | 6 | $2,682,303 |
| Secure &Trustworthy Cyberspace | 6 | $2,198,121 |
| ANALYSIS PROGRAM | 5 | $1,746,201 |
| Algorithmic Foundations | 5 | $1,416,456 |
| Info Integration & Informatics | 5 | $2,748,873 |
| Social Psychology | 5 | $2,456,184 |
Top 10 NSF Programs of the new UCLA grant terminations
Notes
- NSF’s grant general conditions refer to suspension and termination as separate events, but there are no definitions distinguishing the two and they are not treated differently. As the events of this year have shown that terminations may be reversed, we treat these suspensions as effective terminations in the Grant Witness database.
- Active grants are those that have not yet ended, and are not in the process of being closed out. The administration has frequently terminated or suspended grant in the process of being closed out or have already ended. Grant Witness does not include these in our database.