University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Lingjun Li, left, and Ph.D. candidate Lauren Fields show off some of the crabs used in Fields' research project on how neuropeptides relate to feeding. The NIH, which funded the project, canceled it in April. (Photo courtesy of Lingjun Li)

Lauren Fields was less than four months into a research project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) when she got an email message from her program officer at the federal agency.

A doctoral candidate in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fields has been studying the biochemistry involved in the feeding process of  a common crab species. She and her faculty supervisor believe the project can shed new light on problems such as diabetes and obesity in human beings.

The two-year research project started in early January 2025. But the April NIH message told Fields the funding was being cut off. It didn’t explain why.

“It just said changes to NIH/HSS policies and priorities,” Fields says. NIH operates under the umbrella of the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Fields contacted her program officer on April 9. “I tried to kind of probe further with my program officer and I didn’t get any further than that,” she says.

She and her project supervisor have a working hypothesis, however. Fields’ project was funded under an NIH program to ensure that more researchers come from backgrounds that have been historically under-represented and underserved. She won the award as a native of Appalachia and a first-generation college student. 

This past spring, that program was quietly shelved after an executive order from President Donald Trump on his first day in office put an end to all federal programs involving diversity, equity and inclusion.

Trump’s order called such efforts “radical and wasteful.” But Fields’ supervisor, UW Professor Lingjun Li, says measures to broaden the field of researchers can help ensure higher quality and more useful research findings.

“We believe that different, diverse backgrounds can actually bring unique and different perspectives to make our research enterprise better and stronger,” says Li. Li is on the faculty at the UW School of Pharmacy as well as at the Chemistry Department in the UW-Madison School of Letters and Science.

Feeding crabs to understand human biochemistry

Fields’ project examines the feeding behavior and process in the Jonah Crab, widespread in the coastal waters of North America. She wants to know how neuropeptides — molecules that send signals through the nervous system —  prompt them to start and stop feeding.

“Crabs actually have one of the most well characterized systems to understand feeding behavior in the animal kingdom,” Fields says. That’s why UW has been making use of the species in its research.

Fields says research such as hers is directly relevant for human conditions that relate to eating — “anorexia, obesity, diabetes — conditions like that.”

For example, the medication semaglutide, which includes the high-profile brand Ozempic and is used for diabetes control and to curb obesity, is understood to work by mimicking the neuropeptides involved in the human feeding process.

Thanks to similarities between the neurotransmitters in crabs and the neurotransmitters in mammals, researchers can use what they learn “from our humble crabs to understand feeding behavior in higher order organisms,” she says — including people.

The project as it was designed also made it possible for Fields to track the entire research process instead of it being spread out through several different labs. That’s not always possible, she says.

“So I do feed the crabs,” Fields says. “I do dissect the crabs and prepare the samples from the tissue and all the way through.”

She records mass spectrometer readings that produce relevant information about the neuropeptides at the center of her research, then analyzes the data at the end to make sense of the whole feeding process.

A personal connection

Fields feels a personal connection to the research because of where she grew up. “Appalachia has historically higher rates of diabetes and heart disease, also mental health disorders, and it’s also been kind of really impacted by the opioid epidemic,” she says. “These are things that I grew up with, that’s a very real part of my everyday experience.”

And that background “is something that I keep in the back of my head,” Fields says. “Even on a hard day, it tells me what I’m working towards is helping the people back home overcome these types of things and have new alternative solutions that are maybe more affordable.”

Fields’ project was funded through an NIH fellowship program known as F-31,  directed at pre-Ph.D. researchers, and a specific category within that program set aside as diversity awards.

According to a now-expired NIH description, the F31 Diversity awards were made “to enhance the diversity of the health-related research workforce by supporting the research training of predoctoral students from diverse backgrounds including those from groups that are underrepresented in the biomedical, behavioral, or clinical research workforce.”

In her own research field, examining Alzheimer’s disease, Li says there’s “abundant evidence”  that the condition affects different ethnic groups differently — both in the outcomes it produces and in the biomarkers that are used to track the progression of the illness in a patient.

“The intention is to really help to address some systematic inequities in biomedical research,” Li says.

A more diverse research workforce can elevate the importance of considering a more diverse group of patients, helping researchers “really get a full understanding of the disease,” she says. “And there’s a lot of talk about precision medicine, personalized medicine and certain types of treatment that will be more effective to certain populations than others.”

Fields says that to qualify for the diversity research grant, “you have to jump through several hoops to really illustrate to them that you are somebody that has faced challenges that would warrant the diversity fellowship.”

But the academic qualifications are no less rigorous than what the regular F-31 grants require, she adds. Fields first applied in December 2023 and went through the process of refining the application before it was finally approved. The funding officially began in January 2025.  

“You have to be in the very strict, top percentage of the applications that were submitted to even get funded,” Fields says. The sudden decision to cut her project short leaves “a message that has been kind of hard to swallow.”

A short-term reprieve

Fields did get a short-term consolation: While the project was canceled in April, she was told her funding for the current calendar year, $37,165, remained intact through December. But she was also told that the funds “can be terminated even earlier, which fortunately has not happened,” she says.

She has been able to continue the project, but she’s also had to accelerate it considerably.

“It’s now, OK, we need to hurry up and do the research with the time that we’re allotted,” Fields says — even as she has to watch over her shoulder in case the money is cut off sooner. “You have to move as fast as you can, or as efficiently as you can, because you don’t know when the rug is going to be pulled out from under you.”

The prospect of other funding to make up for the second year loss, also $37,165, is unlikely.

“That was a conversation that we’ve had several times along the way,” says Fields. “When I found out that it was terminated [NIH officials] said, ‘Oh we would love to help you apply for other opportunities,’” she recalls.

Considering how much time elapsed between her original application and the grant’s arrival, however, “it’s a little tricky,” Fields adds. “I think they were really just trying to be supportive, but at the same time, not super practical.”

Private funding seems an unlikely prospect, Fields and Li say, with competition escalating while federal options are being curtailed.

“Research funding in general is a lot more difficult to get,” says Li. “It’s pretty hard to find replacement funding right away.”

In the meantime, Fields’ next step is to seek a post-doctoral fellowship — a task made more challenging because of widespread academic hiring freezes prompted in the wake of federal research funding cancellations.

She still has her eye on a career in academia, where she hopes to pursue research on personalized medicine for people in Appalachia.

Li says Fields is far from alone in her experience. Some colleagues across the country who were awarded fellowships through the diversity program saw their awards canceled “either right before or just a couple of months after when they started,” Li says, and their projects have ended before they even started.

“There are quite a few people. A range of research groups and programs are being affected,” Li says. “This could have even a longer-term impact on our country’s biomedical research.”