Protestors outside the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, rallied last May to oppose cuts to staff members and funding made at the agency.Credit: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty It is missing dozens of staff members, called grants management specialists (GMSs), who are crucial to handling the business and administrative aspects of issuing grants. Many GMSs either resigned or were laid off in 2025 by the administration of US President Donald Trump as it sought to downsize the federal workforce. Nearly 20% of the NIH's employees left last year. At least one of the NIH's 27 institutes and centres has lost so many GMSs that it has asked early-career researchers, including postdocs and graduate students, who work in the NIH's own labs to consider working temporarily as a GMS on a volunteer basis, according to internal documents, meeting notes and e-mails that Nature has obtained. The institute, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), projected in March that...
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