Chemistry sophomore Zahra Mahmood wanted to work for the National Institutes of Health and began looking into potential job opportunities at the institutes over winter break. Aside from the possible prestige she could get from researching at the world’s largest biomedical research funder, the NIH offered environmental health and research opportunities that aligned with her interests and her future career path — cardiology.
With just one email, Mahmood’s plans for the summer were changed. After spending days on her application, writing essays, getting letters of recommendation and submitting it, she was informed the NIH had canceled its internships for the upcoming summer on Feb. 27.
In an email sent to Mahmood, the NIH cited “uncertainty” as the reason for canceling the summer internships. Mahmood does not know for sure what the uncertainty is, but she said she suspects it is due to recent funding cuts from President Donald Trump’s administration.
“It’s quite disappointing,” Mahmood said. “Talking to other pre-med or science majors that I’m friends with, a lot of them were looking forward to having research experience, and especially me as well, this summer. It’s kind of a bummer that a lot of institutions aren’t going to be able to offer programs this summer.”
The University declined to comment on the cancellations, and the NIH did not respond to requests to comment. However, it is not the only health organization to have student internships affected by federal funding uncertainty.
“I actually applied to Baylor College of Medicine here in Texas, and they also sent an email saying that due to nationwide unforeseen budget cuts, our results will come out later than expected,” Mahmood said. “I applied to that internship back in January, and they were supposed to let me know by the first week of (March), and I still haven’t heard back.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also canceled its summer internship programs, which hit applicants like public health sophomore Crystal Lerner.
“I feel like it’s hard to do those kinds of things during the school year because there’s so much going on, so summer is really the only chance we have to kind of get work experience that’s applicable,” Lerner said. “I want to apply for grad school in the future, so that’s something that I’m thinking about trying to get those experiences now.”
Lerner said she was disappointed that politics were affecting the research field.
“I feel like every day you just hear more news stories about these people that are being fired, and it’s all people doing really important work, from education to public health to cancer research,” Lerner said. “I feel like the politicians that are in power right now aren’t really thinking through all the implications of that for our future.”
These applicants are now worried about getting research experience important to their majors and careers, having planned around obtaining these opportunities for this summer. Now with these internship opportunities canceled, students have to look and hope to get this experience elsewhere.
“I’m mostly just in the stage of waiting to hear back from (other internships),” Lerner said. “Fingers crossed that I get something else.”
