Roughly one in five recipients of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) prestigious Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP) typically works in the life sciences. However, there’s nary an ecologist, neuroscientist, or molecular biologist in the latest batch of 500 fellows announced earlier this month. At the same time, computer scientists captured a much larger share of awards, which provide an annual stipend of $37,000 for 3 years, than they have done in previous rounds.
NSF isn’t saying why this cohort looks so different by field of study than the 1000 fellows announced 2 months earlier. But the new distribution appears to align with President Donald Trump’s push to prioritize artificial intelligence and quantum information science. Some scientists worry it may also reflect Trump’s opposition to any federal investments that broaden participation in science, as most of the students in the latest cohort work in fields that are disproportionately male, white, and Asian.
The program is open to students in any field that NSF funds and has supported 50 Nobel laureates since its debut in 1952. But many scientists saw the size of the initial 2025 class—at less than half previous annual levels—as a retreat from NSF’s historical mission to train the next generation of U.S. scientists and engineers. Their fears grew last month when NSF’s oversight body spoke of its desire to see the private sector sponsor a significant number of future fellows.
