Assault on Accessibility Initiatives Hits Early Career Scientists Hard

If someone had walked past the storage of the neuroscience lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in May, they might have heard quiet sobbing.

It was Uma Chatterjee, a doctoral student, having a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder flare-up triggered by the pressure of disappearing research funding.

Since January, core funding from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health has faced deep cuts. The administration of President Donald Trump has cut more than $4 billion from the National Institutes of Health and $970 million from the National Science Foundation, affecting more than 7,000 grants, according to Grant Witness, a database tracked by scientists. Although a federal judge ordered the NIH to reinstate some funding, Scott Delaney, a co-founder of Grant Witness, said that “most grants that have been terminated are still terminated. They haven’t come back, and they likely won’t.”

Among the programs being targeted are those designed to expand access to science for underrepresented groups — including people with disabilities, who account for one in four adults in the U.S. 

In 2021, President Joe Biden’s administration issued an executive order that prioritized their inclusion in the federal workforce. But the Trump administration has mounted a broad attack on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives, leaving some early career scientists with disabilities increasingly uncertain about their place in a field where they have long faced systemic barriers. 

Chatterjee studies the biology and treatment of OCD, a neuropsychiatric disorder that affected an estimated 1.2% of U.S. adults last year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Her lab was awarded a five-year NIH grant expected to provide annual funding, but a few months ago the amount was reduced without explanation, according to Chatterjee. Now the lab is struggling to pay its staff, she said. 

Disability Researcher Harmed

Chatterjee is not the only early career disabled scholar affected. Soli Guzman, a Mount Holyoke College graduate with multiple chronic and neurological conditions, had plans to continue research in protein biochemistry through a program that places underrepresented recent graduates in labs across the country — but those plans were upended by funding cuts. 

In April, the NIH ended funding for the Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program, forcing colleges nationwide to halt applications. About 50 campus-based programs were affected when DEI initiatives came under political attack, according to John Shacka, an associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who chairs a group of PREP program directors. After two lawsuits — one brought by Massachusetts and a coalition of states, the other by public health groups and others — challenged the cuts, a federal judge ordered the grants restored. But last month, the Supreme Court ruled that the lower court lacked jurisdiction, although it left in place the finding that NIH’s process was unlawful. Meanwhile, roughly half of PREP programs remain without support, according to Shacka.

When PREP was first suspended, Guzman had just finished submitting 27 applications to local programs across the country. “The ground was ripped out from under me,” they said. “I’m a planner. I always have a backup. But suddenly, Plan A and Plan B were both gone. I was devastated.”

In April, Guzman received an offer from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Because of funding delays, the university could not place them with a principal investigator until early August. At that point, the lab required them to commit within 10 days.

They turned it down. 

They also faced financial and logistical hurdles: the challenge of finding affordable housing, the difficulty of quickly finding a roommate, and the need to pay out of pocket for repairs to a car that lacked proper heating. As a person with disabilities, moving would also have meant establishing a new network of care providers. “My health is at its best since 2020, and I didn’t want to change how good my health is,” they said. “If I got sick, I was stuck.”

NSF grantmaking has also stalled. Tara Lepore, a postdoctoral researcher at Western Michigan University and a grant reviewer, said NSF had paused most review activity for months. While the agency’s grantmaking process has recently resumed, many grants that were already awarded were revoked, something they had never seen before.

Lepore, who lives with multiple disabilities, studies equity in STEM education, or science, technology, engineering and math education. The NSF proposal that they submitted would have funded undergraduate and doctoral students to build collaborations between STEM instructors and neurodiverse students. In June, they heard that while the NSF grant was deemed “highly competitive,” it would not be funded because it did not align with the  administration’s priorities.  

“It has all the words that the administration doesn’t like in it,” Lepore said.

In February, NPR reported that the NSF had begun using a keyword filter, flagging terms such as “diverse” and “underrepresented” to screen applications, aligning with new restrictions on DEI content.

Lepore’s project centers on “STEM,” “education” and “equity.”

Capital & Main contacted the NSF and the NIH to ask whether the cuts will affect initiatives designed to expand disabled people’s access to the workforce, education and other areas of public life. 

Cassandra Eichner, a spokesperson for the NSF, pointed Capital & Main to a statement made by Sethuraman Panchanathan, the NSF’s director, in April, in which he said that the agency’s investments “should not preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups.”

An email from the NIH press team said: “NIH and [the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] are taking actions to prioritize research” that directly affects “the health of all Americans. We will leave no stone unturned in [our] mission to Make America Healthy Again.” 

The New York Times reported in February that the NSF had indefinitely postponed an engineering workshop aimed at workforce inclusion for people with autism and other neurocognitive differences in the workforce. 

Funding Cuts Worsen Longstanding Systematic Bias

Guzman’s path to becoming a scientist has been marked by significant health challenges. In college, they developed long COVID-19 and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, leaving them mostly bedridden. They were later diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder. Despite holding student leadership roles and completing three research projects, their chronic health issues affected their grade point average, which stood at 3.4. 

“Disabled people are the only minority group anyone can join at any point in their life — but we’re treated like a problem,” they said. “I’ve even been told not to mention my disability in job applications because, in this political climate, it’s too risky. ”

Chatterjee, who studies biomedical science, shared that view. While she was in college, her health nearly derailed her studies. She graduated with a 1.83 grade point average and had to pursue a master’s degree before applying to doctoral programs. She said lab work remains one of the least accessible academic environments for disabled scientists.

“Our work is dependent on rigid protocols, timing and animal models. There’s almost no room for flexibility,” Chatterjee said. “In theory, there should be systems to help — accommodations, people to back you up — but in practice, the culture is incredibly toxic. People brag about working 80, 100 hours a week, skipping holidays, never taking time off. I fought tooth and nail to get here.”

And it’s not just about inclusion or justice. Chatterjee said she believes the Trump administration’s assault on accessibility represents a loss of potential. 

Guzman, who is working in a lab focused on disability-related research, echoed this view. They pointed to the Norris Lab at the Medical University of South Carolina’s Department of Regenerative Medicine & Cell Biology in Charleston, South Carolina, which studies Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and said that many in the lab live with the condition themselves. To Guzman, this is a clear example of how lived experience can drive empathy and innovation. “We’re often more flexible and empathetic because of our own experiences,” they said. “That makes a difference not just in what gets studied, but in how labs are run and how students are supported.”

Yet scientists who bring their perspective remain scarce. According to the National Science Foundation, only about 10% of STEM Ph.D. recipients reported having a disability. 

“A lot of diversity fellowships end up going to people who are marginalized but still fit the mold of being ‘high-performing,’” Chaterjee said. “Disabled researchers who need real accommodations are often left out, because the system still measures worth by productivity instead of equity.”

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