Beyond the canonical HRF: Flexible temporal modeling reveals unconstrained BOLD profiles during naturalistic viewing.

Sustained federal research funding supports the development of a strong pipeline, which drives forward scientific innovations. In early 2025, a surge of executive orders and the Trump administration's FY 2026 budget proposal sent shockwaves across the academic research landscape, targeting areas ranging from National Institutes of Health (NIH) extramural funding to climate science and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-related programs (; ). Federal science budgets were reduced by double-digit percentages, hundreds of research grants were abruptly frozen or terminated, and politically-appointed agency leaders overrode peer-reviewed funding decisions (; ). Together, these actions led to substantial funding uncertainty for research institutions, laboratories, and scientists across the United States (U.S.). These disruptions quickly affected university research activity, hiring, and staffing. Early March 2025 marked a turning point for researchers nationwide as federal proposals began reducing science funding across agencies (). On March 10, the University of Pennsylvania announced a campus-wide hiring freeze and a 5% cut in non-compensation expenses (). By March 19, University of California (UC) System then-President Michael Drake had ordered a system-wide freeze on new faculty and staff searches alongside other cost-saving measures, while also signaling a more cautious approach to spending in response to federal funding cuts (). On April 8, Northwestern University paused hiring and reduced discretionary spending by 10 percent (). Although these examples represent only a subset of institutional responses, they illustrate the Trump administration's negative impact on recruiting and retaining STEM talent in U.S. laboratories. The effects of these policy changes were also evident in programs that support the next generation of STEM researchers. In April 2025, funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) was cut roughly in half, from about 2,000 awards to 1,000 (). NSF also removed eligibility for second-year PhD students to apply for the GRFP, a program critical to developing U.S. STEM talent () and this could impair the ability of students to join labs after their rotations. Funding to several NIH supported programs, including the Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA) program, was also cut by the Trump administration () and later restored by federal courts (). Within the UC System, president at the time of publication president James Milliken later reversed an earlier decision to end financial support for hiring postdoctoral fellows in the UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (). Although the NSF GRFP award number was eventually partially restored by funding an additional 500 NSF GRFP grants (), and the NSF funded 2,500 Graduate Research Fellowships for the 2026–2027 academic year (), this disruption in funding at major federal science agencies including NSF has undermined key training and career-development pathways.