Sethuraman Panhanathan resigned as Director of the US National Science Foundation on Thursday.Credit: Graeme Slone/Sipa US/Almi
Fresh upheaval -Mutthal has killed the US National Science Foundation (NSF): Hundreds of agency’s research grants were over today, last week, ending up to the top of hundreds already finished ending, Nature Have you learnt. The new end was offered by the agency’s director a day after a sudden resignation and members of the NSF staff were offered encourages to retire quickly due to “future restructuring, staffing cuts and constrained budget environment”.
The late director, Sethuraman Panhanthan, was appointed as one of the major funds of the major research of basic research by US President Donald Trump in 2019 during his first term at the office.
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But Trump, now in the office for the second time, allegedly wants to cut 55% in the agency’s US $ 9 billion budget and 50% in its workforce, As ScienceIn a farewell letter to the employees, Panchnathan wrote, “I believe that I can do all that to pursue the mission of the agency”, “While NSF has always been a skilled agency, we have still challenged to identify other possible abilities”.
Nature Talked with seven NSF staff members for this story. Everyone requested oblivion as they are not authorized to speak with the press. Employees said that they were stunned by Panchnathan’s sudden departure. An NSF employee says, “I respect him more for resigning and not taking the agency’s death warrant.”
Under the Democratic President Bill Clinton, former NSF director Neil Lane offered praise for Panchnathan, who goes from ‘Panch’. “Panch has done an excellent work”, “Science, to reduce the role of NSF in education and everything else is very high”, lanes. US National Science Board, which controls NSF, Panchananathan praised in a statement As “spectacular”.
Asked for comment, an NSF spokes referred to Nature For the farewell letter of Panchnathan. The spokesperson said that the NSF Chief of Staff would serve as Brian Stone Director, until the White House appoints a permanent replacement and the American Senate does not confirm him. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which oversees NSF, did not respond to the remarks request.
Crisis Mode
Since Trump, a Republican, took over, NSF gave frozen and unfortunate grants, fired employees and re -discharged and its undergraduate research fellowship program was cut off from about 2,000 posts. The latest bouts of the upheaval started on April 17, when members of the NSF staff were guided to receive “VIP visitors” from the Government Efficiency Department (DOGE), an initiative led by Trump Elli Elon Musk to reduce federal expenses and to reduce the federal task force.
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The guidance stated that in a request situation that “violations or proper procedures”, employees had to contact NSF Chief Information Officer Dorothy Eronson. The guidance statement said, “No indication that the request will be rejected.” The two members of Dogge, Luke Pharitor and Zachari Terral were fully accessible to the NSF grant-management systems despite statements under guidance to employees that they should get access only to read only. Guidance to NSF employees Previously reported FedscopeA government technology media publication, and confirmed by it Nature,
On 18 April, after the arrival of three Dogi employees at the NSF headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, the agency stopped the financing of any new research grant for a week. The agency has now started releasing grants again, but has released only 377 for April compared to 863 in April last year.
On the same day, the NSF began to terminate the research grant, which was already honored, apparently under the orders of Dogi. An internal list received by Nature The NSF shows that NSF has rinse at least 387 awards of $ 237 million, of which about 45% have already been spent. Over one-third of these, or 152 grants, were honored by the Directorate of Education of NSF. The number corresponds to congested data Compiled in an online database By Scott Delane, Cambridge, Massachusetts, an epidemicist at the Harvard V Chan School of Public Health, and a computational ecologist in Noam Ross, Brooklyn, New York, who is the Executive Director of Ropenski, is an open-leverage.
About 80% of these termed awards overlap with a list of about 3,500 grants released in February, issued by Taxas, a Republican Senator Ted Cruise from Texas, headed by the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transport. Stems from the list A cruise -led report Saying that grants promoted diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), a concept that suggests that is “extremist”. Last week, an analysis By the Democratic Staff for the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, found that the cruise list had “embarrassing mistakes” and used flawed functioning.
