NIH staffing shortage could slash number of new grants issued this year

Protestors outside the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, rallied last May to oppose cuts to staff members and funding made at the agency. Credit: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty A staffing shortage is making it difficult for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to spend its US$47-billion budget by awarding research grants . It is missing dozens of staff members, called grants management specialists (GMSs), who are crucial to handling the business and administrative aspects of issuing grants. Many GMSs either resigned or were laid off in 2025 by the administration of US President Donald Trump as it sought to downsize the federal workforce . Nearly 20% of the NIH’s employees left last year. NIH pivots away from agency-directed science At least one of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centres has lost so many GMSs that it has asked early-career researchers, including postdocs and graduate students, who work in the NIH’s own labs to consider working temporarily as a GMS on a volunteer basis, according to internal documents, meeting notes and e-mails that Nature has obtained. The institute, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), projected in March that it would be able to issue only about 5% of the new awards it gives out in a typical year because of the personnel shortage, the documents reveal. …