The University of Colorado has suffered a $25.5 million loss due to the elimination of federal funding under the Trump administration, including a $9.4 million loss at CU Boulder, according to Chad Marturano, the CU System Chief Financial Officer.

These losses are the result of terminated research awards, including grants and contracts. Faculty use these awards to fund their research.

The $9.4 million lost at CU Boulder are due to five research awards held by CU Boulder researchers that were terminated. Marturano noted these numbers were updated as of Wednesday and could increase moving forward.

CU President Todd Saliman said that, fortunately, the vast majority of research at CU is continuing without any issues. The concern is whether the government will terminate future funding or decide to award fewer grants.

“It’s really a challenging situation because we don’t know what’s coming,” Saliman said. “We know what we’re facing now, but see what other institutions are facing, and it creates significant anxiety.”

Many federal organizations are laying off workers and cutting funds for various federal programs and research due to orders and actions from the Trump administration. Marturano presented data to demonstrate how those changes at the federal level are affecting CU during the CU Board of Regents meeting on Friday at CU Denver.

CU also has researchers who have received stop work orders, which are formal notifications that order a pause on all grant activities. Stop work orders can halt all research totally, partially or temporarily.

“That means essentially the grant goes into a holding pattern,” Marturano said.

Throughout all CU campuses, there have been 12 stop work orders halting all grant-related work. There have been 19 halting part of the research — including 18 related to diversity, equity and inclusion — and one regarding environmental justice.

CU holds about 5,800 federal research awards from 102 agencies across all its campuses, including 2,100 research awards at CU Boulder. Across all campuses, CU receives a total of $942.8 million in federal research funding.

In 2024, 67% of CU Boulder’s research funding came from federal agencies, or more than $495 million, according to a report from CU Boulder’s Research and Innovation Office. The top federal funding agencies that CU Boulder receives research dollars from are NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Commerce, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.

Some CU Boulder faculty last week shared how the changes initiated by the Trump administration have resulted in delayed federal funding, creating uncertainty, job insecurity for research staff and disrupting research and student opportunities.

Saliman said all campuses are moving forward cautiously in terms of the number of graduate students to accept due to it being a multi-year commitment. He said departments are questioning the number of people they can confidently accept in a program.

“We are concerned about the impact in terms of how all our different academic units respond in terms of academic recruiting,” CU Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz said.

He also mentioned the uncertainty surrounding funding for federal labs in Boulder, which share an important relationship with the university. For example, the university works with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research labs in Boulder.

“There’s a concern of how it’s going to affect our ecosystem,” Schwartz said.

An additional $85 million of funding between CU Boulder and CU Anschutz is also at risk from the National Institutes of Health. The NIH imposed a new rate of 15% for indirect costs, which is the amount of money the university receives to support a researcher’s work after the researcher receives a grant from the NIH. It covers costs needed to support a researcher’s work, including administrative needs and building expenses.

There is now a temporary restraining order on that action.

“We estimated the system-wide impact of this, should it have moved forward, was just over $85 million to the university,” said Danielle Radovich Piper, the CU System senior vice president for external relations and strategy.

Radovich Piper said the university has been closely monitoring the roughly 112 executive orders Trump has signed since being in office.

Since Trump took office, CU has created a specific federal government transition webpage with updates, frequently asked questions and other resources. The university has so far sent out 22 federal transition updates to the university community since Jan 20.

Regent Ilana Spiegel asked how the decreases in federal funding impact employees, jobs and layoffs.

Marturano said there are a couple of instances of furloughs due to stop work orders. Two other people have separated from CU, partially related to grant issues in addition to other factors.

For more information, visit cu.edu/blog/government-relations.