NYU spent record amounts on research this year and has “completely recovered” from losing millions in federal funding, administrators said at a Thursday University Senate meeting.
Chief Research Officer Stacie Bloom told faculty and administrators that despite facing “slowdowns” after the Trump administration terminated a slew of grants in April and May, NYU received more than enough private sector funding to compensate for the loss. The university spent around $1.63 billion on research in 2025 — over $150 million more than 2024, an increase President Linda Mills called “truly extraordinary.”
“We have faculty whose grants have been terminated in some of the most important areas that we research — where we feel so strongly aligned with our values, but do not have that money anymore to support that kind of work,” Bloom said. “But it’s very important to remember that collectively, we’ve done great.”
NYU receives most of its research funding from the federal government, but has recently directed its attention toward appealing to philanthropists and foundations by emphasizing profitability in its research proposals. Bloom added that sponsorship from government entities at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai has also helped grow the university’s research profile.
Most of NYU’s major grants have come from STEM proposals, although funding is dispersed across schools — with the College of Arts & Science receiving the largest portion. Bloom said the university has also allocated more finances toward managing research disclosures and risks in an effort to mitigate future funding revocations.
“Our mantra has been to just keep submitting proposals,” Bloom said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Let’s keep all the ponies in the race.”
After Bloom’s presentation, Tandon dean Juan de Pablo briefly discussed NYU’s new Quantum Institute, which was launched last month. Mills announced the new Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Data Science and Computer Science just hours after the meeting, and last month, NYU launched the most powerful supercomputer in New York State.
At the meeting, administrators also reviewed main takeaways from the 20-plus office hours sessions held to discuss NYU’s response to a September hoax shooting threat. Mills’ chief of staff Emma Wolfe said that some schools saw upwards of 100 students at the sessions, and that while feedback was “hard to hear,” it was constructive.
“The conversations quickly migrated from being specifically about the incident on Sept. 11 to broader concerns around communications, safety and how we’re all caring for one another when these incidents happen,” Wolfe said. “We certainly learned that we have to communicate more quickly when we have information that’s critical for community members.”
Wolfe added that one recurring source of confusion among students was the many different types of Campus Safety alerts they receive, and said administrators will tighten distinctions to make the messaging clearer. In the weeks following the shooting threat, several on-campus groups publicly criticized Mills for not initially disclosing that the threat specifically targeted Black students and faculty.
Administrators dispersed into separate discussions about how federal, state and city policies are affecting the university. WSN was not permitted to attend these conversations.
Outside the building, six protesters from NYU’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society rallied to demand the university take an explicit stance against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, cuts to gender-affirming care and compact awarding higher education institutions that terminate their diversity initiatives.
The students held a banner that read “NO COMPLIANCE WITH TRUMP’S VIOLENCE,” while chanting “Immigrants’ rights are here to stay,” “Trans rights are here to stay” and “Whose tuition, our tuition.” A member of SDS told WSN that they felt NYU’s policy of institutional restraint — which says the university will only address political tensions when it must — has failed to create a safe space for students.
“They are a university that claims that they will speak on the most important topics when the time arises,” the student, who requested to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation, said. “And there’s no better time than right now.”
Kaitlyn Sze Tu contributed reporting.
Contact Dharma Niles at [email protected].