By Nidhi Subbaraman, Emily Glazer and Sara Randazzo

Harvard University and other top research schools are seeking corporate funders to support their science labs following sweeping cuts to government grants.

The T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard, which typically gets more than 70% of its annual research dollars from the federal government, lost nearly all of the funding after the Trump administration canceled hundreds of the university's research grants and contracts. The school expected to get more than $200 million this fiscal year.

Administrators called the losses catastrophic.

"The situation is far more dire at the Chan school than any other Harvard school," said Sarah Branstrator, Chan's managing director of academic strategy and research partnerships. "That has prompted immediate action out of sheer necessity."

Layoffs started this spring and are continuing, Branstrator said, and unless cuts are reversed, the school expects to wind down half of its federally funded research in the next fiscal year.

The cancellations come amid months of tension between Harvard and the Trump administration, which has cited concerns about antisemitism and DEI efforts as the reason to cut or freeze more than $2 billion in Harvard funds, threaten its tax-exempt status and try to revoke its ability to enroll international students.

Harvard has twice sued, and the two sides are now in talks about a possible deal, Trump said on social media on Friday. Harvard declined to comment on the negotiations.

The Trump administration has pulled, paused or placed under review more than $10 billion in funding from elite universities.

Looking to fill the funding gaps, faculty, trustees and administrators at Harvard, New York University and other large research universities are ramping up conversations with big technology and pharmaceutical companies in efforts to drive more corporate funding so research stays active.

New talks are still in early and informal stages, and new funding agreements have yet to be struck, people at the universities and companies said.

Branstrator said that even if funding is restored, Chan will "absolutely stay the course" in seeking outside sources for funding to decrease its reliance on government support.

The focus on corporate sponsorship at Chan, which is further along in its planning, is a big shift for a school that typically gets between 14% and 18% of its annual research budget from nongovernment funders.

Previously, Chan's administrators scrutinized and often renegotiated corporate partnerships to avoid conflicts of interest for its scientists. Now, the school is aiming to tap alumni who work in corporate R&D labs and its deep bench of faculty who serve on scientific advisory boards to broker conversations at companies across the life sciences.

"We're hoping for them to play door-opener," Branstrator said.

The school aims to preserve the independence of university scientists, for example with agreements that guarantee scientists can publish their findings with no input from companies, Branstrator said.

A key part of the push is to get companies to sponsor Ph.D. students and postdoctoral spots at about $100,000 annually. Administrators also hope to build on past partnerships. Companies such as Biogen and Pfizer have funded students or projects at some labs.

In the past, federal grants to Chan have paid for research to study genes linked to cancers, document the deadly risks of air pollution, and establish the dangers of artificial trans fats, later restricted by the FDA because of their link to heart disease.

Early conversations are also happening elsewhere at Harvard and at other universities.

Mark Namchuk, executive director of therapeutics translation at Harvard Medical School, which has lost grants worth about $230 million in annual funding, is talking to biotech and pharmaceutical companies about expanding a program launched in 2020 that pairs company research labs with faculty projects. AbbVie was an early partner that invested $30 million into a hunt for therapies on new viral diseases.

Previously, federally funded work by scientists affiliated with the medical school laid the groundwork for GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic as well as a breakthrough gene-editing treatment for sickle cell disease, among other wide-ranging research.

At the Wyss Institute, a Harvard-affiliated center for biological engineering, founding director Donald Ingber is actively talking to multiple companies about starting new research agreements. Industry funding was about 25% of total research revenues at the Wyss for the last fiscal year, but the conversations have "taken on a new priority," he said.

During an NYU strategy meeting earlier this year, participants focused on what areas NYU should examine and pursue around corporate funding.

A PowerPoint presentation shared during that meeting included possible companies to focus on, including Apple, Microsoft, LG and Pfizer, according to a person involved in the meeting and documents described to the Journal.

Company spokespeople either didn't respond to requests for comment, said they hadn't heard from universities in regards to federal-funding cuts or pointed to ongoing conversations related to existing university partnerships.

"We engage in partnerships with innovators to push forward great science and continually seek new partners that are actively researching bold scientific ideas, capabilities and technologies that have the potential to bring innovative treatments to patients in need," a Pfizer spokeswoman said.

Many universities already get some amount of private funding from industry.

NYU has partnerships with big companies, including Meta, Google and Microsoft, and is working to secure others, said Juan de Pablo, NYU's executive vice president for global science and technology. Around 5% of its research funds come from the private sector.

Tech schools have deeper ties to companies than others. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, where nearly 20% of campus research funds come from industry, some 500 companies are partners on about 1,000 sponsored projects.

At the University of California, Berkeley, $57 million, or about 7% of its $827 million research budget in the most recent fiscal year, came from industry.

"We'd always like to see that number grow, independent of anything the federal government is doing," said Benjamin Hermalin, Berkeley's provost.

But, Hermalin and other administrators said, corporate support could never fully replace the larger pool of government funding, which accounted for just over half of academic research dollars nationwide as of 2023.

"It's not feasible to imagine industry would be a substitute for the federal government," Hermalin said.

Other support is limited. Nonprofit contributions accounted for about 6% of university research money in 2021. While many big research schools have multibillion-dollar endowments, much of that money is locked to specific uses and can't readily be used to backfill research budgets. At Harvard, for example, more than 80% of its $53.2 billion endowment is restricted to specific uses.

The funding crunch is also on the radar of industry leaders, more than 200 of whom signed an open letter in June stating that government funding to universities is essential to U.S. economic competitiveness. They asked the administration and Congress to reverse cuts.

Blackstone Chief Executive Steve Schwarzman, a major donor to Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told his firm's real-estate investment committee in June to find ways to help universities looking for funds. The committee discussed investing in student housing and life sciences buildings, types of investments that Blackstone already funds.

As Harvard begins talking with corporations, it is also considering other outside funding sources.

In past weeks, Chan raised more than $3.5 million from wealthy donors and an additional $350,000 in smaller donations from alumni. The school is aiming to get foundation and nongovernment funding on a range of topics, including climate, women's health, LGBTQ+ health and global health.

"I can't imagine any school isn't having thoughts along this line," Branstrator said.

Write to Nidhi Subbaraman at nidhi.subbaraman@wsj.com, Emily Glazer at Emily.Glazer@wsj.com and Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 27, 2025 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)

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