Researchers and research centers across Columbia have had to navigate unprecedented funding cuts in recent weeks and create contingency plans for long-term projects. One member of the CIESIN research team shares their story.

Many laboratories and research centers hosted at Columbia are facing uncertainty following the Trump administration’s announcement of $400 million in funding cuts to the University. Among these cuts stands the Center for Integrated Earth Systems Information (CIESIN) at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a research center working on a variety of projects—including a NASA project.

One researcher at the CIESIN sat down with Bwog anonymously to discuss the implications of these funding cuts on their center and its work. The individual is a research staff assistant at CIESIN, with the majority of their work being on the NASA project SEDAC, or the Socioeconomic Data and Application Center. 

SEDAC is one of 12 data and application centers NASA has across the country, most of which focus on compiling data directly from satellites and other sensors. SEDAC is responsible for hosting and maintaining data on “human settlements, infrastructure, and population that underpin many different science and application areas,” according to the NASA website. The data serves as the basis for a multitude of other research projects and studies, with many other centers around the country relying on SEDAC’s work to fuel their own. Since its inception, SEDAC has hosted satellite data and made it free and available to the public, providing infrastructure, population, and natural disaster information, to name a few categories under its purview.

“People have long seen us as a place where they could go to archive their data,” the researcher said. “Anyone can go online and access any of our data for free.” SEDAC has been “the focus of [the] cuts,” they noted. 

The center itself is relatively small, with a staff of around 30 to 40 people. The contract that was directly impacted by funding cuts accounts for 70 to 80% of the center’s monthly budget. “Basically 70 to 80% of our staff is being impacted by this.” While they had initially assumed that the $400 million in cuts would be for larger and farther-reaching grants, SEDAC’s primary contract was among those affected. On Saturday, March 8, one day after the cuts were announced, the center’s director announced a stop-work order on all SEDAC projects.

“The contract says that the federal government can cancel our contract at any time for any reason, […] what they did is legal,” the researcher told Bwog. “They are within their rights, but it’s wrong. It’s politically justified punishment.”

The Trump administration has been squeezing higher education and research centers since January, with grant and federal funding cancellations sweeping across universities and research institutions. The National Institutes of Health research cuts have interrupted work in biomedical and cancer treatment research, while National Science Fund freezes threaten key STEM education and training programs. 

SEDAC and the greater CIESIN did not receive any prior notification or warning about the funding cancellation—they were informed via the White House announcement along with the general public. 

The researcher noted that the cuts targeting Columbia labs and research “are personal in some ways.” While there are a number of colleges and universities that have been impacted by similar funding cancellations, “we are at the forefront of all of this, and it really does feel like it’s just punishment for student activism on campus,” they said, adding that “[their] research has nothing to do with any of this.”

The stop work order for CEDAC is consequential not only for the research center itself, but for the numerous other groups and institutions that rely on their data, the researcher said. They have spent the last two years working on a project called the Gridded Population of the World (GPW), which provides unmodeled population data that is used as input for other data sets and analyses. “Anyone who needs population data at the scale that we provide it […] comes to us and uses our data because it’s free and it’s just been historically available.”

Another project at SEDAC is the New York State Flood Information Decisions Support System (FIDSS), which produces an online mapping service that allows policymakers and the general public to see different flooding scenarios and their impacts. The project helps government officials make informed decisions and provides education about flood risk. “Climate change only gets worse, and we can rely less on the federal government and federal agencies like FEMA to come in and help us with disaster support,” the researcher said. 

After the cuts were first announced, the researcher described the climate at SEDAC as “bleak and depressing.” The center’s staff comprises many early career researchers and recent graduates and several senior team members and management who have been at CIESIN for decades. “CIESIN came to Columbia 25 years ago, and some of them moved here from Michigan to work at CIESIN, and they’re on the chopping block,” the researcher said. 

The researcher spoke briefly about attending the community town hall hosted by Columbia Climate School Dean Alexis Abramson, noting one question that was asked about the University pulling funds from its endowment to support the centers whose grants had been cancelled. According to the researcher, Abramson was talking about how “on one hand, the University has to protect the rights of students, and on the other hand, we have our research dollars to worry about.” 

Reflecting on the funding cuts, the researcher drew parallels between scientific freedom and student rights. “I feel like the value of every single federal dollar that comes into Columbia is basically nothing if scientists can’t be able to publish their research and their findings and feel free to do so without free speech concerns,” they said.

Dipping into the endowment to support research would be helpful, they said, but not so long as the University “gives up more rights or capitulates to other agreements. It’s not worth it, because there’s no guarantee that [the Trump administration] won’t just come and cut the rest of the funding,” they said.

As of April 1, most of the staff at SEDAC have been able to continue working despite the stop work order on their project. The researcher told Bwog that one colleague was let go because his contract renewal coincided with the stop work order. 

SEDAC’s contract is now listed on the Department of Government Efficiency’s website under “savings,” which denotes areas where cuts have been made to decrease federal spending. Additionally, the NASA Earth Data website now states that SEDAC is no longer being updated. 

Many of the researcher’s colleagues who are officers of research must be given 90 days notice about contract non-renewals. Since the fiscal year will conclude on July 1, they anticipate that many of those letters of non-renewal will be sent out to staff this week. Support staff do not have to be given notice about contract non-renewal. 

Currently, the University is reviewing the “Research Action Plans” that they have produced. “I anticipate that once they finish review of these [plans], they will have to lay off the rest of the staff whose time was paid for by SEDAC, who will not have been given notice already,” the researcher said. 

Alexander De Sherbinin, a Columbia geographer who leads SEDAC, recently told Science that the cancellation of SEDAC’s contract is “cutting at the knees some of the capabilities that NASA has painstakingly cultivated,” having far-reaching repercussions and affecting NASA’s work as a whole. 

On Thursday, a source told Bwog that all SEDAC data was removed from the NASA online data portal, which constitutes over 25 years of data collection. “We are working on getting it rehosted elsewhere but in the meantime it is inaccessible,” the researcher said. “I am honestly shocked that NASA would remove our data. This is both 25-plus years of work that the taxpayers paid for, as well as other data that researchers entrusted us to archive.” 

The researcher at CIESIN reflected on the past several months, characterizing the Trump administration’s widespread cuts to research funding as an “attack on science.” 

“No one is safe if we are willing to give up our rights and to give up the rights of our students—our first concern has to be that we can do our jobs and speak freely,” they said.

Earth’s City Lights (1995) via Wikimedia Commons