An article fromDive Brief Trump officials plan to shift more research funding to individual scientists

In a wide-ranging memo, they also directed federal agencies to experiment with models other than peer-review for assessing research proposals.

Published July 23, 2026Natalie Schwartz Senior Editor

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White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios attends an event at the White House on June 22, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Kratsios called for an overhaul of the nation's research landscape in a wide-ranging report. Andrew Harnik via Getty ImagesListen to the article 5 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Dive Brief: 

• The Trump administration plans to prioritize awarding research funding directly to individual students and researchers, shifting away from academic institutions some of the federal government’s roughly $200 billion annual research and development budget. 

• In a Tuesday memo, White House officials also directed federal agencies to experiment with models other than peer review for assessing research proposals.

• Federal agencies with large R&D budgets must submit plans within 90 days detailing how they would adopt the memo’s guidance, according to the Tuesday memo from Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget and a key architect of Project 2025, and Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

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The Trump administration has set its sights on overhauling the nation’s research portfolio. It has, among other moves, terminated grants at research universities collectively worth billions of dollars and proposed regulations that would give political appointees — not panels of peer reviewers — the power to approve awards. 

Kratsios, who is also President Donald Trump’s science adviser, told House lawmakers during a hearing Wednesday that the administration’s vision further includes funneling more money toward individuals and private companies and away from universities, The New York Times reported. 

During the hearing, Kratsios said the Trump administration would focus more on priorities like robotics, artificial intelligence and nuclear energy and veer away from life sciences. Likewise, in a wide-ranging report accompanying the memo, Kratsios called for prioritizing Trump’s Genesis Mission, an initiative established by a November executive order to use AI to advance the nation’s scientific research. 

In Tuesday’s memo, Vought and Kratsios directed federal agencies to prioritize programs that allow individuals to move their grants between institutions — a practice they said would encourage colleges to compete over early-career talent. They cited the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship program, which provides fellowships to students pursuing master’s or doctoral degrees in STEM fields. 

In his report, Kratsios took aim at academia, arguing that universities saddle researchers with administrative burdens and that the process for obtaining tenure encourages researchers to pursue small projects over large, ambitious ones. 

“Cutting work into the smallest publishable units, which researchers call ‘salami-slicing,’ often pays off more than making an ambitious attempt at transformative discovery,” Kratsios wrote. 

He also contended that universities “extract significant overhead from researchers, which funds a mix of legitimate shared infrastructure and growing administrative bloat.” He pointed to the federal government’s reimbursement rates for indirect research costs, which fund key expenses like laboratories, equipment and utilities. 

The average indirect cost rate negotiated by institutions with National Institutes of Health funding was 58% in 2024, according to a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research last year. 

Last year, the Trump administration attempted to cap those rates at 15% across four federal agencies — drawing widespread alarm from universities — but judges blocked those moves. Congress has also barred the Trump administration, for now, from capping those rates. 

Still, Kratsios said in his report that the federal government should “rein in” indirect costs. 

The Trump administration is also planning on overhauling the process for awarding grants. Federal agencies rely on peer review, which brings together scientific experts to assess the merit of research proposals.

But Kratsios said the government should adopt a “broader menu” of review options and pointed to a “golden ticket” system that a private foundation in Denmark has experimented with. Under that system, individual reviewers can recommend proposals that lack consensus support. “This model helps rescue high-risk breakthroughs that colleagues might reject,” he wrote.

The National Science Foundation has begun piloting this system, Kratsios said in the report. 

In their memo, the Trump administration officials also directed federal agencies to expand the number of long-duration grants — those lasting at least five years, that they award. 

Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, slammed the Trump administration’s plans Thursday. 

“We agree that our research enterprise faces serious challenges. But reforms must strengthen scientific independence — not weaken it,” they said in a statement. “Research priorities must be guided by scientific expertise, rigorous peer review, transparency, and the public interest — not by political ideology, short-term commercial incentives, or the preferences of any administration.”

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