The Trump administration has cut off support that has sustained a teaching model that for decades has been instrumental in catapulting students into careers as scientists.
Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Undergraduate Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement (U-RISE) supports the pursuit of advanced degrees by students in the biomedical field, who are offered tuition assistance, mentorship, registration to professional conferences and, crucially, lab experience.
Now, however, the NIH has abruptly severed that pipeline, stating that the program fails to align with the White House’s priorities.
NIH canceled all U-RISE funding at City College, Queens College, Brooklyn College, Lehman College and Medgar Evers College. According to the NIH reporter, which tracks the institute’s grants and projects, the agency ceased funding for several other institutions nationwide, including historically Black colleges and universities.
Professors who work with students in the program say the federal defunding will likely doom the program, and with it vital opportunities to conduct research while attending a public college — putting them on track for further academic research.
“A student, no matter how driven or brilliant or capable they are, if they are not given some kind of exposure to a lab or research environment, they’re not gonna get admitted to a PhD program, period,” Dr. Maral Tarjerian, director of the Queens College U-RISE program, told THE CITY. “We need to have something that’s gonna facilitate access to research at the undergraduate level, or else we’re really not training these students adequately.”
Among the research students tackled were projects on molecular pharmacology, neuroplasticity and chemistry.
One student, who declined to provide their name citing fear of retaliation from the Trump administration, told THE CITY that they likely would not have considered enrolling in any graduate program before signing up for U-RISE.
“For it to happen out of the blue, it’s been surreal,” they said about the abrupt cancellation. “I’m grateful for the training that I’ve been given, regardless, and it sucks that I won’t be able to continue as it stands right now.”
Samples were stored at the Queens College Stress in Pregnancy lab, April 25, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
All five CUNY institutions were two years into what were supposed to be five-year grants that are terminated as of March 31. The schools had already received between $133,661 and $402,643 to support about eight students on each campus.
The two-year-old U-RISE program, administered by the NIH, had been an extension of two, decades-old nationwide programs, known as Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) and Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE). U-RISE has been intended to give smaller institutions similar support to programs that did the same for top research universities.
The U-RISE cuts are among 61 research-related CUNY projects that received stop-work orders from the NIH, according to an email sent to staffers in late April by Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez. The agency also shut down a project spearheaded by researchers at the CUNY School of Public Health studying vaccine misinformation.
The defunding of U-RISE comes as part of a larger effort by President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to slash the NIH budget by 40% as part of the secretary’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) released a report calculating that $2.7 billion in NIH funding had been eliminated through March, including funding for research in infectious disease, mental health, cancer and aging.
Program directors at all five colleges said they learned about the funding termination via email and have filed an appeal through NIH seeking to reverse it.
Dr. Donna McGregor, U-RISE program director at Lehman, said she had been expecting another payment on March 31.
“We found out like four days before that, that there would be no more money because we had a stop work order,” she told THE CITY.
In an email sent to both City College and Lehman, the NIH sought to justify canceling the funding.
“Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness,” read the email.
“Worse,” the email continued, “so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics, which harms the health of Americans. Therefore, no additional funding will be awarded for this project, and all future years have been removed.”
Not all colleges got a formal termination letter though. Directors at City College and Brooklyn College only learned that their programs had been axed when they received their notice of award notifying them of the defunding.
NIH did not respond to a request for comment from THE CITY.
CUNY’s U-RISE programs are open to students studying science, biomedical engineering or psychology who intend to pursue further research, and the programs targeted students with backgrounds underrepresented nationally in scientific research.
Professors say that the defunding, in line with Trump’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, targets CUNY students simply for being who they are, in the communities they live in.
“We are a minority-serving institute organically. It’s not that we choose to only serve minorities. We’re just being representative of our neighborhood,” said Queens College U-RISE Program Director Maral Tajerian. The college is located in Flushing, a community with a large Asian American population.
“They think for some reason it’s being taken away from someone else. That’s not the case,” she said. “This is our community, and we’re serving our community. It just happens that our community is diverse.”
CUNY overall “remains deeply concerned about the potential impact of federal cuts,” a university spokesperson said in a written statement.
“University leadership is working to support everyone in our community and will pursue every avenue available to sustain CUNY as a preeminent research institution,” wrote Noah Gardy.
‘This Is a Big Hole’
Labiba Aziz, who turns 22 this Saturday, is a U-RISE grantee at Queens College who is graduating with a degree in neuroscience this month and will next be studying molecular cellular pharmacology at Stony Brook University. She had received a $12,000 stipend each month that helped cover living expenses, and was able to obtain valuable lab experience studying the impacts of stress during pregnancy.
Students walk by the Benjamin Rosenthal Library at Queens College, March 14, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
“Being part of this program really allowed me to pursue research and see it as a possible career choice,” Aziz told THE CITY in a phone interview, noting that she “definitely” would not have been able to enroll into graduate school without U-RISE.
Through the program, Aziz was able to leave her job as a medical assistant at a fertility clinic to work with researchers on a study that tracked hundreds of mothers to see how stress experienced during pregnancy affected child and fetal development.
Aziz lamented that her peers who have not graduated yet will not have the support she received.
“They’re also pretty upset. And I totally get it. They had a whole year. They were promised funding. It was almost abruptly cut off,” she said. “I don’t really know what to tell them because I think, not to be pessimistic, but I am not sure for the next four years if they’re going to have such opportunities again, and what they can really do to help themselves apply.
According to the program directors, City College and Lehman are filling in the financial gap through the remainder of the academic year, while Queens College and Brooklyn College gave financial support for the month of April.
Students at Medgars Evers College in Brooklyn, a predominantly Black institution, have not received any additional financial aid amid the NIH cuts.
“We haven’t approached it that way, given the budget situation,” Dr. Moshin Patwary, director of the U-RISE program at Medgar Evers, told THE CITY.
“We made sure that every student got their full second year of support. And if some of the grant was terminated before all of them had gotten that full second year, the college is covering that,” said Dr. Jonathan Levitt, director of the U-RISE program at City College. “There’s no soft-coating it. This is a big hole.”
McGregor said that Lehman College provided $3,000 to each of the eight students in the program to help cover expenses for April and May.
Since the U-RISE program is only two years old, most trainees have not graduated yet. One student at Lehman College and Aziz are set to graduate in the coming weeks. Levitt noted that 35 of 57 students enrolled in the MARC program at City College, which preceded U-RISE, earned a postgraduate degree over the last two decades while the others completed their undergraduate degrees.
McGregor, who helmed the RISE program at Lehman for five years before that was replaced by U-RISE in 2023, said that 14 of 15 students matriculated in biochemical graduate programs. Six students in this year’s cohort were on track to graduate next year before the NIH terminated its support.
Patwary directed the RISE program at Medgar Evers from 2014 to 2021, where 22 of 42 students enrolled in biomedicine graduate programs while the remainder obtained employment in healthcare or pursued medical, dental or pharmacy degrees. After a three-year application process, NIH granted a U-RISE program at Medgar Evers in 2024.
Brooklyn College U-RISE director Dr. Mariana Torrente told THE CITY that MARC graduated 90 students over more than three decades. Approximately 75% of those graduates earned advanced degrees or are currently pursuing them, she said.
“These programs have a strong return on investment,” said Torrente, who noted that three of Brooklyn College’s 10 U-RISE trainees are set to finish their degree next semester and are in the process of applying to graduate programs.
Of the 57 students who graduated through the MARC program at Queens College, which was established in 2004 and preceded U-RISE, 45 obtained or are pursuing advanced degrees.
“Everyone who applies gets in somewhere, and everyone who got in finished or is still there doing fine,” said Levitt, who has directed the U-RISE and MARC programs at City College for more than 20 years. “That’s what all these programs are supposed to do: make them competitive and prepared.”
Aziz says the NIH cuts cripple CUNY’s mission to increase students’ socioeconomic mobility.
“CUNY has always been historically this place of access and mobility. I’ve had a lot of my siblings attend other CUNY schools, so I’ve seen how CUNY has always uplifted communities such as mine,” she said.
“But, you know, cutting these programs really undermines their mission of access and mobility.”
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