The Trump administration is injecting more than $100 million into education programs for American researchers in STEM fields, as federal policies stanch the flow of foreign scientists to the US and policymakers focus on an AI arms race with China.
The initiative, which President Donald Trump is set to announce at a White House summit on Thursday, aims to increase the number of highly trained scientific researchers who are American citizens through fellowships for PhD programs in science and engineering disciplines, according to a White House official.
The administration is also resurrecting the National Science Foundation’s Young Scholars program, which was shuttered in 1996. It is being revived with $30 million in government funding and an additional $50 million from sources including Wall Street juggernaut Jane Street, the official said.
Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a statement that the investment would “help to ensure America keeps leading the world in discovery.”
“The Trump Administration is committed to empowering American STEM students and enabling them to pursue opportunities at the frontier of science and technology,” he added.
Trump will also use Thursday’s summit to present awards to tech industry leaders including Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. CEO Lisa Su, according to the official.
Trump’s effort to elevate homegrown academic researchers in STEM comes as a crackdown on international students is hitting science and engineering PhD programs in the US particularly hard, threatening to constrict the pipeline for advanced scientists entering American companies and universities.
Boosting Research Capacity
Many colleges froze or reduced admissions to doctoral programs this year, and the number of students admitted to PhD programs fell by 15% from the previous year. International students made up nearly 40% of PhD students in science and engineering fields in 2024, according to federal data.
Federal investment in STEM PhDs also comes as the government looks to boost AI research capacity and improve the position of the US in what administration officials say is a global race to develop artificial intelligence.
At the event Thursday, Trump will also announce that the Department of Energy is gaining access to $100 million in compute credits to pursue scientific discovery thanks to a private donation, a White House official said.
The move comes after the Trump administration implemented a raft of policies that have upended postgraduate academic research, including in STEM fields. Doctoral programs have been roiled by more than a year of cuts, freezes and uncertainty around the federal research grants they rely on heavily for support.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the most prolific producers of STEM PhDs, saw a roughly 20% drop in federal research funding this year. At Johns Hopkins University, which trains large numbers of biomedical scientists, federal funding fell by nearly 45%.
The Trump administration has also attempted to cut funding to NSF and the National Institutes of Health, the primary backers of US scientific and medical research. And new caps on graduate student loans could limit students’ ability to pursue PhDs after undergrad.
Early-Career Researchers
Trump is also announcing an initiative to boost the number of early-career researchers at the NIH. The federal government lost more than 10,000 employees with STEM PhDs in the first year of the Trump administration, including roughly 1,100 at the NIH, thanks to a wave of layoffs, voluntary departures and retirements.
In July, Kratsios released a proposal to overhaul the system for federal scientific research funding, which would prioritize cutting-edge fields like AI and give both industry partners and individual researchers more control over a process long dominated by academic institutions.
The incentive program for US STEM researchers dovetails with recent moves to sideline international candidates for roles in emerging tech fields. Earlier Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security proposed charging $70,000 to foreign students seeking a popular postgraduate work visa – and an additional $30,000 to get a special extension for those in STEM fields.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
