The same day the Trump administration froze $790 million in funding for Northwestern on Tuesday, more than 100 research projects have received stop-work orders from the Department of Defense since then, according to a Thursday afternoon email from University President Michael Schill.
The email said that orders have primarily impacted researchers in graduate programs under the Feinberg School of Medicine, McCormick School of Engineering and Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, thus far, and have affected research into wearable devices, robotics, nanotechnology, foreign military training, Parkinson’s disease and others.
One graduate student, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, said they were first informed of their stop-work orders by their project leader Wednesday.
The orders meant “do not spend any more money, figure out what to do with your students,” said the student, who also found out their project grants had been frozen.
“I’m going to focus on what I’m going to control now,” the student said. “I will try to keep working to maintain as much progress as possible.”
The federal freeze on funds allocated to NU mostly targets grants and contracts from the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education and Health and Human Services, The New York Times first reported Tuesday.
Similarly, Cornell University — which has faced a $1 billion funding freeze from the federal government since Tuesday — has also seen more than 75 stop-work orders from the Department of Defense.
So far, for Fiscal Year 2025, NU has already received $2.38 million in federal contracts from the DOD. Last fiscal year, NU received contracts from the DOD worth up to $20.27 million in total.
This is a developing story and will be updated as new information becomes available.
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— Federal government freezes $790 million in funding for Northwestern
