The loss of NIH diversity supplements at UC Berkeley disrupted research on infectious disease spillover and reduced training opportunities for future scientists.
An NIH-funded research project at the University of California, Berkeley saw the termination of two NIH diversity supplements in early-2025 that had supported the stipend, tuition, and training costs for a graduate student and a post-baccalaureate research fellow following changes to NIH diversity supplement policies. The parent NIH award, which remains active, supports research on how zoonotic diseases circulate in wildlife and under what conditions they pose a risk of spilling over to humans, work directly relevant to US and global health security. The two supplements funded complementary projects, including the development of statistical tools to predict drivers of spillover risk and foundation research on how viruses persist in animal hosts. Both were intended to run for multiple years but were terminated well before their expected end dates, eliminating approximately $450,000 in anticipated support. While the core research continues, the abrupt loss of these funds reduced the team's capacity and significantly disrupted workforce training.
Because graduate students must be financially supported through completion of their degrees once enrolled, the principal investigator had to move the affected graduate student onto another grant. This shift altered the student's research trajectory and prevented the lab from hiring an additional trainee. The post-baccalaureate fellow, whose supplement had been designed to provide research experience and mentoring ahead of graduate study, was retained only by redirecting funds from another grant, again resulting in a lost opportunity to hire for another trainee or staff member. Notably, neither trainee was from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group; both qualified under long-standing eligibility criteria for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, including rural upbringing and severe economic hardship.
These supplements played an important role in opening scientific career pathways for talented individuals from a wide range of backgrounds. By supporting those from outside backgrounds traditionally seen in academia, they helped broaden perspective within the scientific workforce, an important factor in strengthening public trust in science. The loss of this funding mechanism is reducing training opportunities, narrowing career pathways for early-career scientists, and weaking a proven NIH approach for both advancing high-impact research and developing the next generation of researchers.